


Into the Spin

by flutterflap



Series: Into the Spin [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Chloe and Lucifer are trying to figure it out, Deckerstar early days, F/M, Lucifer is trying hard, School Reunion, Summer Deckerstar Exchange 2017, Trixie adores Lucifer, post-reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11978823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutterflap/pseuds/flutterflap
Summary: A case involving some of Chloe's high school classmates takes Chloe and Lucifer to Chloe's 20th high school reunion. Lucifer is delighted. Chloe, not so much.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BaileyBelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaileyBelle/gifts).



> This takes place after my story "Tell Me About Despair...", but can stand on its own.
> 
> A gift for the lovely BaileyBelle for the Summer Deckerstar Exchange on Tumblr! My prompt was: I'll honestly take anything Deckerstar related (even with some Laze thrown in). Things I like best: missing scenes, Chloe finally deciding to have a relationship with Lucifer and flirting badly, Lucifer dealing with emotions he can't handle in silly ways, Deckerstar family fun with Lucifer not knowing how to handle Trixie, Linda \o/, Laze, fluff and angst. Eh, maybe that's too much freedom? If so, go with "Chloe has to attend her high school reunion and asks Lucifer to be her date." 
> 
> The title and epigraph are from the song "Into the Spin" by Dessa: https://genius.com/Dessa-into-the-spin-annotated
> 
> And finally, many thanks to [Antarctic_Echoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antarctic_Echoes/pseuds/Antarctic_Echoes) for the beta!

_And if we choose to fall_  
_Who’s to say it isn’t flight?_

The morning was still cool when Lucifer arrived at Chloe’s flat, much earlier than he generally made a habit of being awake (unless he hadn’t gone to bed in the first place), but the detective’s car was in for repairs and she’d asked him to pick her up instead of meeting at the precinct. It was an excuse to spend time alone with her, and he was happy to oblige. 

A tentative sort of normalcy had settled between them again in the weeks since she and Maze had rescued him from the desert and the detective had learned the truth about him, but they hadn’t discussed their relationship—past or future—since that night. Chloe had questions, and when she asked he did his best to answer, but he didn’t ask any questions of his own, partly because he didn’t want to push her too hard, partly because he was afraid of the answers. Things _felt_ almost like they had before—before her poisoning, before the revelation that she was a miracle, before he’d let himself admit that his feelings for her went far beyond work or friendship or sex—but underneath they were both waiting, not quite ready to revisit whatever it was that had started to grow between them. He wished he knew what they were waiting _for_ , if he would know it when he saw it and do the right thing, say the right thing.

The door flew open as he raised his hand to knock and a small human barreled into him, throwing her arms around his waist and sending him stumbling back down the walk a few paces. “Lucifer!” Trixie grabbed his hand and pulled him inside, tugging him into the living room. “Want to see what I made at camp? It’s a model of Mars! I’m going to be the first president of Mars. Did Maze show you my Halloween costume from last year? I’m going to wear it at camp tomorrow. We’re having a costume party, and an overnight!”

He blinked under the onslaught and cast a desperate glance toward the kitchen, where the detective wasn’t bothering to hide her amusement. “Morning.” She grinned, eyes sparkling, and he couldn’t help but smile back, his earlier tension melting away into the pleasure of seeing her. She let her daughter drag him halfway to the living room before she called her back. “Trixie, babe, come eat your breakfast.” The child dropped his hand, dashed back across the flat and climbed onto the barstool.

Lucifer ambled over more slowly, watching her tilt scrambled eggs onto a plate and butter a slice of toast. She slid a cup of coffee across the counter to him. “Want some eggs?”

He inclined his head, looking around hopefully. “Actually, if you’re making breakfast, I’d take one of those sandwiches with the Hawaiian bread.”

She rolled her eyes and held up the pan. “I’ve got eggs.”

“Very well.” He idly flipped through the pile of mail sitting on the counter while she divided the remaining eggs between two plates and passed one to him, along with a piece of toast.

“You’ll have to butter your own toast.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Detective, are you offering—”

“ _No._ ” She gave him a sharp look and cut her eyes toward Trixie.

He gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look. “Because if you are, I’m always up for—”

“ _Lucifer_.”

Trixie giggled, and he winked at her. He went back to flipping through the mail. _Boring, boring, boring—_ “Ooh, what’s this?” He held up a square white envelope of heavy paper.

“What’s what?”

“It looks like you have an invitation to a party, Detective.” He started to open it.

“Give me that.” She snatched it from him. Her lips pressed together as she scanned it, and she tossed it aside into the pile of coupons and flyers. “High school reunion,” she said, picking up her fork again.

“Don’t you want to go?”

She snorted. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” he wheedled. “It’ll be fun. I can be your date. Don’t tell me there isn’t some ex you’d like to stick it to by showing up with the most desirable man in L.A. on your arm.”

She cocked her head to the side, as though considering. “Well, I would, but I think Leonardo DiCaprio is busy.”

He spluttered. “ _Leonardo DiCaprio?_ ” he asked, his voice rising an octave.

Chloe bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Oh, did you mean you?” He made an affronted noise, and her laugh broke free. “Why are you so interested in going?” she asked.

He shrugged, trying to keep an appearance of nonchalance—as much as he could with her teasing. “I never went to high school, I don’t know what it’s like,” he said. That, and the invitation had made him realize that he didn’t know very much about the detective’s childhood. He knew she’d felt like she’d had to grow up too fast because of her mother, that she’d felt pushed into acting—but it occurred to him suddenly that he didn’t have any idea what her life had been like before she became a police officer, not really. Going to her high school reunion seemed like a good opportunity to find out. A thought occurred to him, and he leaned forward. “Was it like _Hot Tub High School_?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t decide if that’s a serious question.”

Before he could answer, Trixie piped up, “Why didn’t you go to high school, Lucifer?”

He and Chloe both froze for a moment. “Oh, I—” he said, at the same time as Chloe said “He, um—” They both broke off, exchanging a glance. Chloe had asked that he not tell Trixie the truth of who he was, not wanting to scare the child, and he couldn’t argue with that, but he wasn’t ready with a half-truth to explain his past.

Chloe recovered first. “Homeschool,” she said.

“Ah, yes,” Lucifer confirmed. “Homeschool.” To the extent that he’d been formally educated, it _had_ happened at home. 

“Oh.” Trixie chewed thoughtfully on her toast. “I don’t think I’d like that.”

“Oh?” Chloe leaned on the counter again, all her attention on her daughter. “Why not, sweetie?”

“Because there wouldn’t be any other kids to play with.” She looked up at Lucifer, her brows drawn down. “Didn’t you get lonely?”

Her question struck him with a sudden, sharp pain to his chest. He took a sip of his coffee to hide it. “I have a lot of brothers and sisters.”

The child’s eyes lit at that. “Really? How many?”

“A lot.” He heard his voice come out more sharply than he’d intended. Chloe glanced sidelong at him. She touched his elbow, her eyes questioning, concerned. 

“That’s enough questions, Trix,” she said. “Go get your stuff. Jenny and her mom and going to be here to pick you up, and we have to go to work.”

***

Chloe watched Lucifer out of the corner of her eye. Dispatch had summoned them to a crime scene on the beach near the airport, so they were headed straight there instead of to the precinct. He was usually at ease in the driver’s seat of the Corvette, but his posture hadn’t lost any of the stiffness it had taken on when Trixie had asked him about his childhood. He concentrated on the road ahead of them, his expression closed.

“You okay?” Chloe asked. She’d waited until they got off the highway so she didn’t have to shout to be heard over the wind.

“Of course.” He gave his head a shake, as though coming out of a daze. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seemed a little upset back there. When Trixie asked about your siblings.”

He grimaced, softening. “Yes. I didn’t mean to speak so harshly.”

Chloe waved the apology away. “That’s not what I meant. Seems like she hit a nerve.”

Another grimace. “Yes, well. My childhood wasn’t easy, Detective.”

No, she imagined not. She could tell his older brother loved him, and Lucifer cared about him, in his way, but it didn’t take a psychologist to see the tension between them, the old hurts and long-held grudges that neither of them would let go of. And if she’d assumed he’d been abused before she knew—before she _believed_ —his true identity, that assumption hadn’t changed. Her conversation with Charlotte had confirmed it, and there was no other way to reconcile the stories she’d heard about the Devil with the man she knew. But . . . she remembered standing with him in the offices at Wobble, watching the content moderators. _People don’t arrive broken, Detective,_ he’d said. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?” she asked.

He shrugged. “No.” A faint smile curved his lips. She wondered what he was remembering. “Not all bad. I suppose . . .” He trailed off. “It was even good, for a time. When I was young.”

She smiled, thinking of what he must have been like as a small child. Mischievous, certainly. As irreverent then as he was now. But she also imagined him as an affectionate child. Eager to please, when it suited him. Hungry for attention, for love that at some point, he had stopped receiving, and so he had acted out.

He turned down a side street and pulled into the parking lot off the beach that Ella had directed them to. He noticed her watching him and his eyes narrowed. “Why are you looking at me like that, Detective?”

She smiled. “Just imagining you as a kid.” An image popped into her head and she couldn’t stop herself from giggling. “Oh, my God.”

He winced. “Detective, please don’t—”

“Sorry.” She swallowed another giggle. “I just realized something.”

He scowled. “What?”

“When you were a baby, I bet you looked like one of those rosy-cheeked fat baby angels in the paintings. Cherubs.”

“I most certainly did _not._ ” He slammed the car door and started toward the beach, digging in his pocket for his cigarette case. Chloe hurried after him, still suppressing laughter. “For one thing, Detective, cherubs are another order entirely from archangels and angels. They’re not _baby angels._ That’s not even what they look like.” He paused for a moment to light his cigarette, cupping his hand around the tip. “They’re not very intelligent, and they’re _incredibly_ annoying. They’re like”—he waved his hand, trailing smoke. “Little yappy dogs. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t compare me to them.”

She held up her hands. “Sorry,” she said, her lips twitching. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

“For another,” he went on, “I was neither fat nor rosy-cheeked as an infant.”

Ella caught that last as they approached the roped off area on the beach where a body had washed ashore early that morning. She stood, grinning, and slapped his shoulder with a gloved hand. “ _Everyone_ was fat and rosy-cheeked when they were a baby, buddy. I bet you were adorable.”

Chloe doubled over laughing. Lucifer scowled, looking from her to Ella. “Don’t we have a crime scene to examine?” he asked.

“Right.” Chloe had to look away from him and Ella to get herself under control. She pulled a pair of blue gloves from her pocket and tugged them on. “What’ve we got?”

“Body dump,” Ella said, leading them to where the bloated corpse of a young woman lay on the sand. “Looks like she’s been in the water for about a day.” The thin fabric of a printed sundress clung to bluish skin. Seaweed tangled in her long dark hair, gone stringy with long exposure to the salt water. Ella squatted near her head and Chloe joined her. Lucifer stood behind them, peering over Chloe’s shoulder.

“Not a drowning?” he asked.

Ella shook her head. She pointed to the victim’s neck. “See that bruising?”

“She was strangled,” Chloe said. 

Ella nodded. “The M.E. will have to confirm after autopsy, but I’d say based on the bruising and petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes, that’s the cause of death. And see the shape of the bruises?” 

Lucifer squatted to get a closer look, his forearms braced against his thighs. “No finger marks,” he observed.

“Right,” Ella said. “Whatever strangled her looks like it was pretty wide. A baseball bat, maybe?”

“Or an arm,” Chloe said. She scanned the area. There were no pockets in the victim’s dress, and she didn’t see a purse or a wallet anywhere on her. Either taken or lost, she guessed. “Do we have any idea who she is?”

“Not yet. We’re running prints, and Dan’s checking her description against missing persons reports.”

Chloe straightened, pulling her gloves off. “Who found the body?”

“A couple of runners,” Ella replied, nodding toward where two people dressed in running shorts and t-shirts stood just outside the tape with two uniformed officers. 

As they walked over, Chloe touched Lucifer’s elbow lightly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun of you, before.”

“It’s quite all right, Detective.” His grin flashed. “I’ll take my revenge the next time your mother’s in town.”

“Oh?” Chloe was glad to see he’d relaxed, but his tone made her wary.

“There might not be any photographic evidence of _my_ infancy, but I’m sure there is of yours.”

She laughed. “My high school yearbooks would be a better bet, if you want to embarrass me,” she said, and immediately regretted it when his grin turned sly.

“Really?” he drawled. “And where might I find those?”

She shook her head and turned her attention to the two witnesses, a boy who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, and a man who looked like he was his father, with a gray-streaked beard and the same shape to his face. As she and Lucifer approached, Chloe could see a distinct greenish tinge to the boy’s light brown skin. Chloe felt a pang of sympathy for him.

“Thanks for waiting,” she greeted them as they reached the tape. She introduced herself and Lucifer. “I know you already gave statements. I just have a few questions, Mr.—?”

“Reyes.” The older man extended his hand and Chloe shook it. “Armando. This is my son, Emiliano.”

Chloe shook Emiliano’s hand. “Do you run on this beach often?”

The boy looked at his father, who nodded encouragingly. “Almost every morning,” he said. “My dad comes a few times a week.”

“Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary in the last few days? ”

They both shook their heads. “It’s usually pretty quiet,” Armando said. “Occasionally there are other runners or surfers, maybe a boat off in the distance. We come early, though. Not many people are out when we are.”

“There was a boat yesterday,” Emiliano said, his brow furrowed as he tried to remember. “It was pretty far out, I couldn’t see the name or anything. I don’t know if that helps.”

“Anything you remember could be helpful,” Chloe assured him, though there was no way to know if the boat he had seen was the one that had carried their Jane Doe’s body out to sea. She could as easily have been dumped somewhere up the coast and been washed down on the current. “Do you remember anything about it? The color, maybe?”

He shook his head. “It was too far away to tell. It was a dark color, though.”

Chloe nodded and jotted down a note. She took two business cards from her pocket and handed one to each of them. “Please call me if you think of anything else,” she said.

Lucifer stood beside her in silence and watched them go. “What next?” he asked, when the two out of sight down the beach.

Chloe turned and surveyed the crime scene. “Probably nothing, at least not for a few hours,” she said. “It’ll take some time to get an ID on her. You can go, if you want. I’ll get a ride back to the precinct and call you when we’ve got a lead.”

He shrugged. “I’ll stay,” he said.

Chloe squinted up at him. He usually took the first opportunity to leave at the first sign things were going to get boring, but he wasn’t showing any signs of restlessness. He stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing up the beach in the direction the Reyes’s had gone.

He noticed her watching him and glanced down at her. “Shall we go for a walk, Detective?” he asked.

She studied his face, trying to read his expression, but he’d gone inscrutable again. “Okay.” She touched his arm. “Let me check in with Dan and see where we are on an ID first.”

***

“This is where I landed when I got to L.A.,” he said, after they’d been walking for a few minutes. They strolled along the hard packed sand just above the water line. “Not far from here. It’s where Maze cut my wings off.”

Chloe shuddered at the thought of what that must have been like. She had seen the scars, knew they were from something terrible, but she had thought they were old wounds, long healed. Now that she had seen his wings, felt their solidity and strength, she understood anew that removing them meant removing _limbs_. As if he’d had Maze saw off his arm or leg. She wondered at the kind of pain and anger that had driven him to mutilate himself like that.

She hesitated for a moment, but he seemed to want to talk. “Do you regret having them back?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know.” He glanced sidelong at her. “I’ve been trying to do as you suggested. To—to not think about what they mean. Not think about my father.”

“Oh? How’s that going?”

He gave a wry smile. “Old habits die hard.”

 _I’ll bet,_ she thought. They ambled along in silence for a few minutes more.

“What _were_ you like as a baby?” Chloe asked, thinking back to their earlier conversation. He raised an eyebrow. She grinned, teasing. “I mean, if you weren’t a fat baby angel.”

He laughed at that, a real laugh this time, with none of his earlier stiff indignation. “I was a beam of light, Detective.”

She snorted. “No, really.”

“Really!” he insisted. “In terms that you can understand, anyway. Celestial beings don’t take on a physical form when we’re born. We’re energy, light, consciousness. Form comes later. It requires intention.”

“So . . .” She looked him up and down. “Does that mean you can look however you want? Like a shapeshifter?”

He shook his head. “No. My physical form is unique to me.”

“But it was intentional.” She frowned, trying to understand. “So you chose how you would look?”

“Not exactly.” He started to run a hand through his hair, realized what he was doing, and dropped his hands back down to his sides. “‘Intention’ may not be the best word. As an angel’s consciousness becomes more fully formed, physical form follows it. Personality shapes form.”

“And you sprang into physical existence as an adult?”

“Of course not. I’m just saying that angels don’t have the same kind of infancy that humans do. I suppose—” He faltered for a moment and turned to look out over the waves. A breeze blew in off the water, making his jacket flap. “I suppose when my form first took shape, I looked quite like a human child.”

“Just not a fat baby?” Chloe nudged him, trying to coax him back from the melancholy place he kept drifting to.

A smile ghosted over his face. “Definitely not a fat baby.”

She imagined a long-limbed, wild-haired boy of twelve, with white wings too big for him and a mischievous glint in his eye, and smiled. “I bet you were a holy terror.”

“I most certainly was.” He tilted his head to one side. “What about you, Detective?”

“What about me?”

“What kind of child were you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Ordinary, I guess.”

“I doubt that.”

She shrugged again, suddenly uncomfortable under his scrutiny. “I guess I was a tomboy. I was always climbing trees and coming home covered in mud.”

He laughed. “I bet Penelope loved that.”

She smiled, too. “She didn’t mind, actually. And I didn’t mind doing auditions, either, at first. It was fun to play dress-up.”

“But?”

“It was always about her. I got tired of being a prop.”

He made a thoughtful noise. Chloe imagined Lucifer had some sense of what that was like. “And that’s when you went and starred in _Hot Tub High School_?”

“I wanted to know what it was like to be a star.”

“And you didn’t much care for it,” Lucifer observed.

“No.” Now _she_ was the one gazing into the distance, brooding. Remembering the day her father died, the hated flash of the paparazzi cameras, the vast emptiness that had opened up inside her when she saw herself in their eyes. “It was fun, but it didn’t mean anything.” 

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. Chloe shifted her weight, feeling her boots sink into the sand. She gave herself a shake. “Come on,” she said, taking his arm. “We should head back. Maybe Dan turned up a lead.”

He let her lead the way back at a faster clip than they’d set out at, his long legs allowing him to keep up easily. “I think you made the right choice,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“While I have great admiration for _Hot Tub High School_ ”—she rolled her eyes—“you’d be wasting your talent if you’d kept on making films. You’re good at what you do.” He paused, avoiding her eyes. “You help a lot of people.”

Chloe blinked against the unexpected burning in her eyes. “That’s—Thanks.” They slowed as they approached the yellow tape around the crime scene. She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and gave her head another shake. “Shall we go try to help one more?”

He lifted the tape for her to step under. “Lead the way, Detective.” 

Dan greeted them at the police van. “No matching prints in the system,” he said, “but we’ve got a potential missing persons match. Sabrina Diaz.” He handed Chloe a tablet. “We’ll have to confirm with dental records, but all the particulars match, and so does the description of what she was wearing when she disappeared.”

Chloe looked at the face of the young woman on the screen, half-smiling in a driver’s license photo, and felt hollow inside. “I know her,” she said.

Dan’s eyebrows rose. “You do?”

“Not well.” She glanced at him, then at Lucifer. “We went to high school together. I haven’t seen her since we graduated.” An ache of sadness that she was usually able to keep at bay while working on cases lodged in her chest. Chloe hadn’t been friends with Sabrina, but she’d liked her. Everyone had. She’d been class president, star sprinter on the track team, a straight-A student, and not a petty or vindictive bone in her body. Chloe remembered her as warm and kind, the rare person who was genuinely well-liked by everyone around her.

Well. Not everyone. She looked back across the beach to where the forensics team was carefully lifting her corpse into a body bag.

Lucifer followed her gaze. “Well, Detective,” he murmured, “it looks like you might have a reason to go to your reunion after all.”

Chloe scowled. “Let’s hope we can find out who killed her before it comes to that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the investigation gets underway.

Chloe’s boots clomped hollowly on the wooden boards as she and Lucifer climbed the stairs to up to the front door of the neat little house in West Hollywood, the street behind them quiet in the gathering dusk. It had taken the rest of the day to confirm Sabrina’s ID, but Chloe hadn’t wanted to wait to notify her wife. She knew how it felt, not knowing. The memory of Lucifer’s disappearances— _twice_ , in less than six months—was fresh enough that she still felt a small rush of relief at seeing him in the mornings, a part of her half-afraid that he would vanish again. She wasn’t willing to make Sabrina’s wife wait a minute more than she had to. She squared her shoulders and rang the bell.

A tired-looking woman answered, dressed in leggings and a paint-stained t-shirt. A headband held her short sandy hair back from her face, making it stick up. As soon as she saw Chloe’s badge, her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, God.” She swallowed hard, looking back and forth between the two of them. “You found her, didn’t you?”

“Lena Miers?” Chloe asked. “I’m Detective Chloe Decker. This is my partner, Lucifer Morningstar. Can we come in?”

Lena didn’t move. “You found Sabrina?”

“Yes.” Chloe said. “I’m sorry.”

“Then she’s . . . ?”

Chloe nodded. “Can we come in?” she asked again.

She stepped to the side and gestured for them to enter, ushering them into a pleasantly cluttered living room. Through a doorway across the room Chloe could see into a sunroom that was being used as a studio, lined with stacked canvases and shelves stacked neatly with paints and brushes.

“What happened?” Lena’s voice shook. She perched on the edge of an armchair across from them, indicating that they should take the couch. Her hands twined together so tightly that her fingers went white.

“We found her body early this morning,” Chloe said, as gently as she could.

Lena closed her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “You’re sure it’s her?”

“Her dental records matched.”

“Oh, God.” She covered her mouth with her hand, muffling a sob. “What—? How—?”

“We’re not sure yet. We have a few questions about the night she disappeared.”

Lena nodded, but she didn’t seem able to speak. She kept her hand over her mouth, her shoulders working with each hitching breath. 

“I know this is difficult,” Chloe murmured, glancing around for a box of tissues or something she could offer her. Beside her, Lucifer got to his feet and Chloe shot him a questioning scowl. Was he bored already? He gestured back impatiently and wandered over to the sideboard. Chloe turned back to Lena, trying mightily to ignore the telltale clink of glass and slosh of liquid. She was going to kill him. 

“We’ve read the missing persons report, but it would help if you can tell us what happened,” she said. Lena nodded, but still didn’t seem able to answer.

Lucifer returned and knelt by her chair, pressing a tumbler of whiskey into her hand. “Drink some of this, darling,” he said. His gaze had taken on that dark, transfixing quality, and she seemed to calm down a little when she met his eyes. She took the glass with shaking hands and took a sip, sloshing some of the amber liquid over her hand. She coughed, but seemed steadier when she lowered it. He smiled, sitting back on his heels. “That’s better. Now, what can you tell us about Monday night?”

“She had a dinner meeting.” She took another sip from the glass and drew a deep, shaky breath. “She texted me around 9 to say she was on her way home. That was the last time I heard from her.”

“Was it normal for her to have meetings so late?”

Lena nodded. “Every Monday for the past six weeks or so. She’s—she was on a planning committee for her high school reunion.”

Lucifer sat back up on his knees and looked over at Chloe. “Oh, now, Detective, you _really_ have to go,” he said.

She gave him a black look, but softened her features when she noticed Lena’s questioning glance. “I went to high school with Sabrina,” she said. “We hadn’t kept in touch, but I remember her being . . .” She searched for a word. “I remember she was kind to everyone,” she said at last. 

Lena gave her a watery smile. “She is. Was,” she agreed, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. 

“I know this is difficult,” Chloe said. “I’m sorry I have to ask this, but were you two having any trouble? Any reason to think she might have been doing something other than planning the reunion?”

“No.” She shook her head firmly.

“Nothing at all? No arguments?”

Lena shrugged and spread her hands. “I wished she’d be home more,” she said. “She worked hard. I was hoping, maybe after her promotion . . .” She trailed off.

“Lots of long hours?” Lucifer caught and held her gaze again, leaning forward with his hands resting on his thighs. Chloe watched, fascinated, as Lena fell under his spell, more completely this time: her face went slack, and her tears stopped flowing. “I bet that made you feel neglected,” he said.

She resisted for a moment, then gave a jerky nod. “A little.”

“Maybe worried she’d found someone else to fulfill her desires?”

“No.” Lena answered without hesitation. “She would never.”

He cocked his head to one side. “What about you, Lena? What do you desire? What weren’t you getting?”

Her lip trembled. “Children.” She broke her gaze away from his and bowed her head. “I wanted kids. She—”

He sat back, glancing at Chloe, who grimaced. Conflict in their relationship, certainly, but nothing about Lena’s demeanor suggested that there was anything more to it than what she described. Certainly nothing to indicate that she’d been cheating.

“Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Sabrina?” she asked.

To her surprise, Lena answered immediately. “She got promoted over someone at work. Keith.” She frowned. “Keith Owens, I think. He was so angry she got the promotion instead of him, he made a big scene at the office and they suspended him. He showed up drunk at our house that night. He was yelling about it being affirmative action bullshit. We had to call the cops.”

Chloe jotted the name down on her notepad. “Was he violent?” she asked.

She nodded. “He was throwing things at the house, and he tried to fight the cops who showed up.”

Lucifer’s lips quirked in a smile. “And how did that work out for him?” he asked.

A little huff of a laugh escaped Lena. “Not well,” she replied.

Chloe flipped her notebook closed. “We haven’t found Sabrina’s phone or purse,” she said. “Did she have a planner or anything that she might have left at home?”

Lena shook her head. “It was all on her phone, and she had her laptop with her.” She thought for a moment. “Her sketchbooks are in the office, but . . . I don’t know if that’ll be any help.”

Chloe gave her a tight smile. “Not right now, but I’ll let you know if we want to take a look at them.” She pulled out one of her cards and handed it to her. “Call me any time,” she said.

Lena took it, standing to walk them out. “I will.”

Chloe squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sorry. Sabrina and I weren’t close, but I liked her. She didn’t deserve this.”

Lena blinked rapidly. “Just—find out what happened.”

“We will,” Chloe promised, and followed Lucifer down the walk.

***

“What do you think?” Lucifer asked, as he steered the Corvette along the winding residential streets. 

Chloe let her head fall back and looked up at the sky. It had gotten dark while they were questioning Lena, but the night was too hazy with smog and city lights for her to see any stars. She closed her eyes, the long day finally catching up with her. The Corvette’s engine purred beneath her.

“I think I want to go home and go to bed,” she said. She opened one eye and caught his smirk. “Alone,” she clarified.

He quirked an eyebrow. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to.”

He grinned, and she smiled back. They drove the rest of the way back in comfortable silence. It was nice, Chloe thought. She wasn’t sure where things were going between them— _if_ they were going anywhere—but after a day like today, after having to tell someone her loved one was dead, she was intensely grateful that somewhere along the way they had found a way just to _be_ together. His presence soothed her. She closed her eyes, enjoying the play of the wind over her face.

“Shall I pick you up again tomorrow morning?” Lucifer asked as he pulled up in front of her building.

“No need,” she told him. “Maze said she needs to stop by the station to pick up her check. I can get a ride with her.”

“Oh.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel, not looking at her. “All right.” 

It took a moment to for Chloe to realize he was disappointed. “I just thought I’d save you the trip,” she said. “It’s out of your way.”

“I don’t mind.” A mischievous glint appeared in his eyes. “And I was hoping I’d get one of those sandwiches.”

Chloe snorted. “Fine. You’re gonna owe me breakfast, though.”

His grin widened. “Deal. Goodnight, Detective.”

“Goodnight, Lucifer.”

He watched through the gate until she was through the front door before his engine revved and he pulled away. Chloe waved at him through the window, feeling a small spot of warmth in her belly at the gesture.

***

Keith Owens was waiting for them in the interview room when they got to the station the next morning. Chloe slid into the seat across from him and flipped open his file, examining him out of the corner of her eye as she did so. He had a beaten-down look about him, dressed in faded jeans and a fraying t-shirt, his face unshaven and his eyes dull. Lucifer perched on the edge of the table at her elbow, studying him more directly. She let the silence stretch out until Owens began to squirm under Lucifer’s gaze.

“What’s this about?” he asked finally. Sweat had begun to bead on his upper lip and along his hairline.

Chloe closed the file and leaned on her elbows. “Sabrina Diaz was found dead yesterday morning.”

He paled. “What’s that got to do with me?”

She flipped the folder open again and glanced down at it. “You were arrested last month for showing up at her house and threatening her.”

Lucifer leaned over and pulled the sheet of paper out of the folder to look at it. He raised an eyebrow. “I’m all for public intoxication, Keith, but I do draw the line at threatening innocent people.” He showed his teeth. “I only threaten guilty ones.”

He looked from Lucifer back to Chloe, blinking. “What? You—you don’t think I—?”

“She got the promotion you wanted,” Chloe said. “The scene you made got you fired. And then you showed up at her house, shouting”—She took the paper back from Lucifer—“‘Go back to where you came from and stop stealing our jobs,’” she read. 

He had the grace to look ashamed. “I put in five years, and she’d only been there two,” he mumbled. “She was going to be my boss. I deserved that promotion, not her.”

“Now, no one’s your boss. They fired you.” Lucifer stood up and walked around the table to stand over him. “You wanted to see her punished for that, didn’t you?” he asked.

Owens began to protest, but the words died on his lips when he looked up at Lucifer and was caught in that implacable stare. “I . . . yes,” he admitted.

“Go on,” Lucifer coaxed, leaning in closer. “What do you desire?”

“I wanted to be _her_ boss. She was always getting special treatment, ‘cause she’s a woman and she’s Mexican. If I was leading that project, I’d make sure she paid her dues like the rest of us.”

“Is that all? She cost you your job, after all. That would make anyone angry.”

“I just wanted _respect._ Not to have work under some bitch who got everything handed to her to fill a quota.”

He didn’t notice the disgusted twist of Lucifer’s mouth. “So you killed her.”

“What?” Owens sat up straight, startled. “No!” He looked frantically from Lucifer to Chloe. “No, I was angry, but I would never—I _couldn’t_ ”

“Not even ‘some bitch’ who took the promotion you deserved?” Chloe asked, unmoved.

Owens flushed. “I didn’t mean that.” He looked reproachfully at Lucifer. “You did something to me,” he accused.

Lucifer returned to his spot beside Chloe, tugging at his cuffs. “Only revealed the truth.”

“Where were you between the hours of 9pm and 2am on Monday night?” Chloe asked.

“I was home.”

“By yourself?”

Lucifer snorted. “Of course he was by himself, Detective, what kind of self-respecting woman would waste her time with that?” he gestured. “Or man.”

Owens’s flush deepened. “I walk my dog every night around 11,” he said stiffly. “There’s a security camera in the lobby of my building. It should have me leaving and coming back.”

“We’ll check that out,” Chloe said, collecting the folder and pushing back her chair. Lucifer cast one more ominous glance at him and followed her out.

***

Back at her desk, Chloe pulled out her notebook and flipped through it until she got to the page with the list of names of the other planning committee members Lena had given her. She’d dispatched a pair of officers to pull the security camera footage at Owens’s apartment building to confirm his alibi, but her gut told her that he hadn’t killed Sabrina. He didn’t have the stomach for it. 

A search of her high school’s alumni page turned up employment and contact information on all four of them. Chloe sat looking at the reunion page, with photos and bios of people she hadn’t seen or thought about since she was 18. And now she was going to interview them as part of a murder investigation. 

Today was going to be strange.

Lucifer had disappeared into the lab to bother Ella while Chloe worked, but now he wandered up behind her and peered over her shoulder at the screen, his hands in his pockets. “Is that them?” he asked. “Your classmates, our murder suspects?”

“Not suspects yet,” she corrected him.

“Just the last people to see our victim alive.”

“As far as we know.”

He rolled his eyes and followed her out to the parking lot, climbing into the passenger seat of the unmarked car they had for the day. “What were they like in high school, our future murderers? Any early signs of evil?”

Chloe laughed and started to tell him how right he was, but thought better of it. She bit her lip, looking sidelong at him. “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “I don’t want to influence your impressions of them.”

“Fresh eyes?” he asked.

“Exactly.”

***

Their first stop was the sleek office of a tech start-up, an open plan hellscape in primary colors, with exercise balls instead of chairs and not a modicum of privacy to be had anywhere, even for the executives—their offices were glass cubicles along one wall. The bathroom stalls were probably glass, too, Lucifer thought, and grinned to himself. He had used something like that as a punishment on a few souls in Hell. It had been rather amusing. For him, anyway.

“Lucifer.” Chloe nudged him. He shook himself out of his musings and followed her to a bank of desks facing a row of empty conference rooms

“Tristan Allen?” she asked, approaching a man gazing intently at his computer screen, incomprehensible lines of code marching across it. A pot with a small cactus sat next to his computer, beside a framed family photograph of him with his husband, two smiling children, and two large dogs. He had raised up the desk so he could work standing, and he leaned on one elbow, frowning. He was slender, with warm brown skin a shade lighter than Amenadiel’s. Lucifer swept an appreciative gaze over his backside while Chloe got his attention. He turned, pushing dark-rimmed glasses up on his nose. His mouth dropped open in surprise.

“Chloe Decker?” His expression broke into a smile. He hesitated a moment, his glance flicking to Lucifer, and reached for her. Chloe accepted the hug, smiling back. “I was hoping I might see you at the reunion this weekend,” he said. “What are you doing here?” He spoke with an English accent softened by decades living in the States.

“I’m here on business, actually.” She pulled her jacket aside to display her badge. “This is my partner, Lucifer Morningstar.” 

Tristan shook Lucifer’s hand, his grip firm but not too tight. He turned back to the detective. “What can I help you with?”

“Is there someplace private we can talk?”

He led them to one of the glassed-in conference rooms. “Sabrina Diaz’s body was found early yesterday morning,” Chloe said, when the door to the conference room was closed firmly behind them.

Tristan froze halfway into his seat and stared up at her. “How awful.” He sank down into the chair, his skin going ashen. “What happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Chloe said, taking the seat across from him. Lucifer sat next to her, watching Tristan carefully. “She disappeared Monday night.”

His skin went grayer. He rubbed a hand over his close cropped curls. “After the planning meeting?”

“She was there?” Chloe asked.

He nodded. “All four of us were. Me, Sabrina, Chad Barnes, and Taylor Morton.”

“And you all left together?”

“I left early, actually. I had to pick my daughter up at play rehearsal. I went home after that.”

“We’ll need to verify that,” Chloe said, her voice gentle, almost apologetic.

“Of course.” He gave her the number for the school and his husband’s cell. “I left at about 8:30. Sabrina was very much alive.”

“Did she mention if she was planning to go somewhere else after the meeting?”

“When I left she was trying to get Chad and Taylor to wrap things up so she could get home.”

Chloe nodded, scribbling on her notepad. “How was the planning going? Any disagreements?”

He shrugged. “About as smoothly as it could. Taylor didn’t like Sabrina’s designs for the invitation, and she’s been arguing about everything she possibly can, but you know how she is.”

“I don’t,” Lucifer said, speaking up at last. “How is Taylor?”

“A control freak,” Chloe said. “Or at least she was.”

“Still is,” Tristan said. “She had a vision.” He gave a dramatic gesture, rolling his eyes as he did so. “I think she was surprised the rest of us didn’t fall into line.”

“What about you?” Lucifer asked. He leaned on the table, meeting and holding Tristan’s gaze with his own. “What’s your vision? What do you desire?”

Tristan’s eyes glazed, his face slackening. Lucifer was aware of the detective watching him, too, listening carefully. “I want . . .” He scrubbed both hands over his face and sighed. “I want a vacation. Without my kids. Joe and I haven’t had sex in months.”

Chloe let out a surprised snort, and Lucifer sat back, releasing him. Interesting, but not motive for murder. Not that he had suspected him to begin with—Lucifer was good at spotting liars, and Tristan’s surprise and distress had seemed genuine.

Tristan blinked, reddening. “Sorry, I don’t know what just came over me.” He shook his head, still looking a little dazed. “I don’t know why I just said that.”

“It’s okay,” Chloe soothed. She shot Lucifer a glare. 

He smiled innocently back. “Quite,” he agreed, turning his smile on Tristan. “Think nothing of it.”

“Do you have any other questions?”

Chloe looked down at her notebook. “What about Chad? Was he involved in the disagreements between Taylor and Sabrina?”

“Not as such. He’s handling all the logistics—space rental, tables and chairs, that sort of thing. I know he’s been getting some conflicting instructions from the two of them, though. I know Taylor’s been pissed at him.”

“And Sabrina?” Lucifer asked.

Tristan shrugged. “She’s never pissed at anyone. She doesn’t—didn’t—like conflict.”

“Taylor was always the instigator,” Chloe agreed. She looked back down at her notebook, flipping through the last few pages. “I think that’s everything,” she said. She took out one of her cards and scribbled her cell number on the back. “Let me know if you think of anything else,” she said, sliding it across the table.

He picked it up and ran his fingertip over the embossed lettering of her name beside the police seal. “Detective Chloe Decker.” He grinned. “You did it. I’m glad.”

She smiled back, her eyes warm. “Thanks. Me, too.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “It was good to see you.”

“Will you be at the reunion?” Tristan asked, standing to follow them out.

“Maybe,” she hedged, ignoring Lucifer’s frown. “I’m not sure yet.” She beckoned Lucifer after her.

“A moment, Detective,” Lucifer said, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled out one of his own business cards and handed it to Tristan. “Get a babysitter,” he said. “And call me. I’ll book you a suite at the London.” 

Tristan’s mouth worked. “I can’t afford—”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “The owner owes me a favor.” He hurried after the detective before the man could protest further.

Chloe raised her eyebrows at him when he caught up with her. She held the door open for him. “That was nice of you.”

“No one should go that long without sex if they don’t want to,” he muttered, tugging at his cuffs. He pulled open the passenger door and climbed into the car.

“You don’t think he’s our killer, then.”

He snorted. “Definitely not.”

“Me, neither,” Chloe agreed.

Lucifer studied her for a moment, her face in profile as she focused on the road ahead. “You were good friends,” he observed.

“More than friends,” she said. “For a little while.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “We were kids. He was more gay than straight, and I . . . didn’t know what the hell I wanted. We lost touch. It happens.” She glanced at him. “But he was always a good person. I’m glad to see he hasn’t changed.”

“Boring,” Lucifer muttered, and Chloe laughed.

“Sometimes,” she said, “Boring is good.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chloe and Lucifer have a Moment in between questioning the remaining members of the planning committee.

Taylor Morton worked as a private financial advisor at an exclusive firm in Beverly Hills, the kind of place that Lucifer might have sought out had he not had Maze to manage logistics—and had he not preferred to work with more trustworthy types than the woman who looked up from her desk when they came into her office, a false smile plastered on her face.

“Chloe Decker!” she cried, standing to greet them. She was blonde, slender, pretty in the way of wealthy L.A. women who covered their insecurities with plastic surgery and too much makeup. Lucifer might have had a bit of fun with her had they met a few years ago—he guessed she had all kinds of dirty little secrets tucked away under that perfect coif—but he found now that she left him with a vague sense of revulsion, especially beside the detective, who returned her false smile with a sharp-edged one of her own. “Look at you!” Taylor went on, looking Chloe up and down. Her nose wrinkled. “You look just the same.” Her gaze turned hungry when it fell on Lucifer. She leaned forward a little, her hands resting on the desk, to give him a glimpse down her shirt. “And who’s your friend?”

“Lucifer Morningstar.” He let her see him look her up and down, and reached for her hand, giving a little bow over it that made her giggle. Beside him, Chloe rolled her eyes. “Civilian consultant for the LAPD.”

“Oh?” Taylor drew back, looking from him back to the detective. Chloe displayed her badge.

“I’m afraid this isn’t a social call,” she said. “May we sit?” She didn’t wait for answer before settling in one of the chairs across from Taylor’s desk. Lucifer took the other one and sat back, crossing his legs and giving the woman flirtatious glance.

“Sabrina Diaz was found dead early yesterday morning,” chloe said. “She disappeared Monday night after the planning meeting.”

“That’s terrible.” Taylor sat back in her chair, her false cheer falling away. She glanced at Chloe’s badge. “It—it wasn’t an accident? If the police are looking into it . . .”

“No,” Chloe agreed. She took out her notebook and rested it on her knee, pen hovering over the page. “We’re trying to piece together a timeline of that night. Right now, we think you’re the last people who saw her alive.”

Lucifer sat back and watched the detective work. She took a different tack than she had with Tristan, neither so warm or sympathetic as she had been with him. She didn’t like Taylor. It wasn’t hard to see why, but the story she drew out of her matched roughly with Tristan’s account of the evening: They had met at 6:30pm after work at a casual restaurant that was centrally located for the four of them, discussed the reunion preparations over dinner and coffee, and gone their separate ways—Tristan at 8:30, to pick up his daughter, the rest of them half an hour later.

“And she was planning to go right home?” Chloe asked.

“As far as I know,” Taylor replied. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”

“I understand the two of you had some disagreements about Sabrina’s designs,” Chloe said.

Taylor raised her eyebrows, looking alarmed. “You can’t possibly think—”

Chloe raised a hand. “I’m just trying to get a sense of the dynamic in the group. Did you have a problem with her designs?”

She fell back in her chair, fidgeting. “Her aesthetic was so _contemporary_ ,” she said. “It didn’t go with the theme for the party, or have anything to do with the class of 1997. But she wouldn’t take any of my ideas seriously.”

“That upset you.”

“Of course it did! We were supposed to be working on the designs together!” She crossed her arms, looking petulant. “But I didn’t _kill_ her over it.”

“Of course not,” Chloe murmured, writing something down. “What is it Sabrina did, again?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well.

“She was a graphic designer.”

“At Disney, right?” 

Taylor’s brows knit together. “What does that matter?”

“Oh, I was just double checking that I had my notes right.” Chloe smiled blandly at her, and Lucifer suppressed a smile of his own. He loved watching her work.

He leaned his elbow on the armrest of his chair, putting on a thoughtful look. “But I bet it mattered to the rest of the committee,” he said. “They didn’t take your design ideas seriously, either?”

Taylor gave a heavy sigh. “It was supposed to be _my_ vision, but they all deferred to _her_.”

“Mmm.” Lucifer met her eyes, catching hold of her with ease. She leaned toward him, her mouth opening slightly. “And what do you want, hm?” He smiled. “What do you desire?”

Her eyes swept over him, tongue darting out to lick her lips. “I want everyone to know I’m the best.”

“The best at what?” Chloe asked. Lucifer heard the scorn in her voice, but Taylor didn’t seem to notice.

“Everything. It should always be me, but no one sees it. I’m the one with . . .”

“Vision?” Lucifer suggested.

“Yes.” She sat back with a satisfied, predatory smile. Lucifer sat back as well, releasing her.

“It must be difficult,” Chloe said, taking over. “Not having people take your . . . _vision_ . . . seriously.”

Taylor scowled. “It’s their loss. They’ll see.” She shook herself, seeming to realize where she was. She looked down at her desk and began arranging the files on it. “Is that all? I really have to be getting back to work.”

“Just one more question,” Chloe said. “Can someone verify your whereabouts for the rest of Monday night?”

“Chad and I went home together. To my place,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “I trust that won’t get back to his wife?”

Chloe’s smile took on that sharp edge again as she closed her notebook. “Of course not.”

Lucifer followed her out of the office, casting one more seductive glance over his shoulder before he closed the door. It didn’t hurt to keep her on the line, he thought. It might come in useful later.

***

Chad Barnes was at lunch when they arrived at his office. Chloe wanted to go find him, but Lucifer’s loud complaints about how famished he was persuaded her to walk across the street to where a line of food trucks was parked along the edge of a park. They sat on a bench in the shade to eat.

Lucifer took a bite of his taco and made a borderline obscene sound of pleasure. “Los Angeles has many things to recommend it, but I’d have come here for the food alone,” he said.

Chloe picked hers up and regarded it for a moment before she bit into it. “What do you eat in Heaven, anyway?” she asked. “Ambrosia? Pomegranates?”

Lucifer blinked. “What?”

“I mean, you get hungry, but do you need to eat to survive? I can’t imagine there’s much food in Hell.”

He gave a short, sharp laugh. “No,” he agreed. He’d closed off the way he sometimes did when she asked questions, gazing into the middle distance with a frown creased between his brows, and she regretted her flippant tone. She was genuinely curious; he complained often enough about being hungry, and took obvious pleasure in food, from cool ranch puffs to the finest caviar. But was it only pleasure? He’d _needed_ water and food when she and Maze had found him in the desert, but that had seemed to be an anomaly. She hadn’t thought the inquiry would hit such a nerve. 

Chloe was about to apologize when he said, “You take the sustenance of the realm you’re in.” He glanced at her. “In Heaven it’s—to put it in terms you’ll understand, it’s rather like consuming starlight. In Hell, it’s . . .” He trailed off, his gaze going distant again. “There’s power to be had, but it’s a world of ash and fire.” He shook himself and grinned. “And here, well—food is one of the singular pleasures of the human world, Detective,” he said, and put half of a taco in his mouth.

Chloe raised an eyebrow. “Not sex?”

He gave her a withering look. “Humans didn’t discover sex, Detective, whatever human teenagers seem to think. What do you think Maze and I did to pass the time?”

She laughed. “Fair enough.” She had more questions—how did one consume starlight? What did it taste like?—but he’d made it clear he was ready to move on from the subject, so she obliged. 

“What do you think of Taylor?” she asked, reaching for the shared order of chips and guacamole on the bench between them.

He thought for a moment. “She has a very high opinion of herself.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have a high opinion of her.”

He snorted. “Her? Please, Detective. She is clearly a bitter and desperate woman. I can do much better.” His eyes lingered on her for a moment, and Chloe felt a rush of heat. She looked away, clearing her throat. The visit to her old classmate had rattled her more than she liked to admit, and she couldn’t help feeling a little burst of relief and satisfaction at Lucifer’s scorn for her. Taylor had always been a bully, and her false smile and (barely) veiled insults had made Chloe feel fifteen again for a moment, gawky and awkward and invisible. 

She reached for another chip, nudging him with her elbow and grinning as she did so. “I don’t know, fake blonde, fake boobs—she seems like just your type.”

Instead of teasing her back, he frowned. “Do you really think that?” he asked.

Chloe blinked, surprised. It seemed she was misreading him all over the place today. “N-no.” She touched his hand lightly. “I was just teasing.”

The frown smoothed away, and he searched her face, his brown eyes clear and earnest. “ _You’re_ my type, Detective. Chloe,” he amended. “I hope I’ve made that clear.”

She stared back at him, her mouth going dry, her heart pounding. “I—” Wasn’t that what she wanted to hear? But it was so much more complicated now, with everything she knew, with everything that had happened. “You have,” she said finally. “I’m just— I need—” _Time. Space. Room to figure out what this is. What we are._ Instead of saying any of that, she leaned toward him, knowing how unwise it was but wanting—needing—to close the distance between them and bring her lips to his.

“What?” he asked, leaning forward as well. There was a soft breathlessness to his voice that made her shiver. His eyes dropped down to her lips and he licked his own, brown eyes wide and dark.

“I . . .” Her phone rang. They both jumped. Lucifer sat back, blink and shaking his head as if unsure of where he was. Her eye still on him, Chloe dug her phone out.

“Mommy?”

Trixie’s voice, ragged and unsteady as though she’d been crying, chased all thoughts of kissing out of her mind. Chloe shot to her feet and paced away. “Trixie? What is it, baby? Are you okay?” She made her voice soothing but her heart had started pounding again at the sound of her daughter’s voice, this time with alarm.

Trixie sniffled. “I threw up.”

“Oh, honey. I’m sorry.” She relaxed a little, relieved it wasn’t anything worse. “How do you feel now?”

“A little better. I’m hot.” Another sniffle. “Nurse Jackson says I have a fever.”

“Oh, Monkey, I’m so sorry.” She could hear the disappointment in her daughter’s voice at missing the overnight. “Either me or Daddy will come get you as soon as we can, okay?”

“Okay.”

She spoke to the camp nurse briefly, confirming that the situation wasn’t an emergency, then dialed Dan.

Lucifer gave her a questioning look when she ended the call, concern on his face.

Chloe grimaced. “She has the flu, it sounds like. Dan’s going to pick her up at camp.” She would have preferred to herself, but Dan was closer, and she didn’t want to give Chad time to talk to the other members of the planning committee before she could. “Come on,” she said, tucking the phone back in her pocket. “I want to hear what Chad has to say.” 

***

Lucifer didn’t need long with Chad Barnes to conclude his best days had been long past, at the latest, by his mid-twenties. Sports memorabilia hung on the walls of his small, dark office, but any athleticism he might have once had was long gone. His blue shirt stretched tight over a gut, and unhappiness hung over him like an odor.

He greeted the detective with a broad smile on his red, puffy face, and gave Lucifer a firm handshake when she introduced him. The enthusiasm was that of a salesman; there was little beneath it except resignation.

“What’s your role on the reunion committee, again?” Chloe asked, settling back in her chair.

He scrubbed both hands over his face, still looking stunned from the revelation that Sabrina was dead. “I’m taking care of the venue, ordering tables and chairs, making sure we had all the supplies and decorations we needed.” He waved a hand, taking in the small room and the offices beyond. “We sell restaurant supplies, so I have access to better prices than someone outside the industry.”

Chloe nodded thoughtfully. “So you were taking direction from Sabrina on the design for the party.” She paused, studying his face. “I understand she and Taylor had some disagreements about how it should look.”

He winced. “Yes.”

“I bet that put you in a difficult position,” she said, her voice sympathetic. 

He gave an exasperated nod. “It’s been impossible to finalize a list of supplies. Sabrina and I keep working things out, and then Taylor decides to change something.”

“So Sabrina was taking the lead.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “She’s the designer.”

“But Taylor is the prima donna,” Lucifer said.

Chad sighed. “Honestly, Sabrina’s just as bad in her own way. Taylor throws a tantrum when she doesn’t get what she wants, but Sabrina . . .” He pressed his lips together. “She just expects you to see that her idea is the better one, and before you know it she’s convinced you that it is.”

“Sounds like she should have gone into sales,” Lucifer muttered, half to himself. He glanced around the office. “She’d be doing a lot better for herself by now.”

Chloe stomped on his foot without looking at him. He jumped and bit back a yelp. Her expression remained pleasant as she asked, “Did Sabrina and Taylor have any disagreements on Monday night?”

He nodded. “They were arguing about flowers. Well, Taylor was arguing. Sabrina was just assuming I’d go with her order.”

“I see. Is that how things have been going?”

“I’ve been trying to compromise.” He shifted in his chair, avoiding both of their gazes.

The detective tapped her pen against her pad, brows knit together as though she were deep in thought. “You and Sabrina dated for awhile in high school, didn’t you?” she asked suddenly, as though it had just occurred to her. Lucifer suppressed a smile, knowing she’d been waiting for just the right moment to deploy that little tidbit.

Chad blinked at the sudden swerve. “Yeah,” he said. “Junior and senior years.” 

“How did Taylor feel about that?”

He thumbed his wedding ring self-consciously. “What do you mean?”

“Taylor said you spent the night with her on Monday.”

A flush crept up from beneath his collar. “I—”

Lucifer raised an eyebrow, leaning forward in his chair. Chad’s flush deepened and he looked down at his desk. “Yes.”

“Trying to negotiate between your ex and your mistress. That can’t be easy,” Lucifer said, leaning forward a little more and resting his forearm on the desk. 

“It’s a nightmare,” Chad said miserably.

“I’m sure it is.” Lucifer waited for him to look up. He smiled, holding his gaze. “So many people whose desires you’re trying to fulfill,” he observed. “What do _you_ , want Chad? Hm?”

He slumped, looking defeated. “I want to be sixteen again.”

Lucifer blinked. “Really?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chloe sit up straighter, leaning forward to match his posture. “Why?”

“Everyone looked up to me.” His face took on a dreamy, far-off look. “I was dating the most beautiful girl in school. I never understood why she broke up with me. That’s when everything started to go wrong. I thought maybe . . .” He trailed off. “I thought maybe I could get her back. Get my life back on track.”

Lucifer and Chloe stared at him with matched expressions of consternation, heads tilted to one side, brows knit together. “You might have started with a trip to the gym,” Lucifer observed. “If she was still attracted to men—if she ever was—you’re not in any shape to be turning heads right now.”

Chad glanced down at himself, reddening again. “Taylor doesn’t seem to mind. Or my wife.” The belligerent tone that had crept into his voice and expression faded into sudden anxiety. “You won’t—I mean, my wife—”

“Won’t hear about your extracurricular activities from us,” Lucifer said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Thank you.” He slumped back in his chair. “Is there anything else I can help you with, detectives?”

Chloe gave herself a shake. “I think we have everything we need for right now.” She stood up, tucking her notepad away. “We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

***

Chloe took a deep breath as they stepped outside into the afternoon sunshine. She’d been right; today had been a very weird day. “Well, that was . . . interesting,” she said.

Lucifer snorted. “I was going to say pathetic.” She glanced sidelong at him. He raised his eyebrows. “What? Trying to win back his high school girlfriend and relive the glory days twenty years later and fifty pounds heavier? That is the very definition of ‘pathetic,’ Detective. There’s a picture of that man in the dictionary next to the word.” He paused. “Besides, who would _want_ to go back to being sixteen? That’s a punishment in Hell, you know.”

She laughed. “I wonder if Taylor knows she’s his second choice.”

“I’m quite certain she does.” They reached the car and he climbed into the passenger side.

“Either one of them could have motive,” Chloe mused. “But they’re each other’s alibis, and we don’t have any evidence tying either of them to her death.” 

“Except that they were apparently the last people to see her alive,” Lucifer said.

“Exactly.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, brows furrowed as she thought through all of the interviews. Assuming Owens’s alibi checked out, Taylor and Chad were the most likely suspects. “We’ll come back to it with fresh eyes tomorrow and see what Ella has for us.” She’d had officers out tracking Sabrina’s car and questioning the staff at the restaurant where the planning committee had had dinner. They would find a connection.

“Quite,” Lucifer agreed. “Now, don’t you have a disease-ridden child to get home to?”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “She has the flu, Lucifer, not the plague.”

“Potato, potahto.” He shuddered. “I’m very glad I can’t get the flu.”

“Are you sure?” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I thought I made you vulnerable.”

The look of horror on his face was so profound Chloe almost felt bad when she burst out laughing at him.

Almost.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the detective can't come to the evidence, then the evidence will come to the detective. Or, in which Chloe works from home, she and Lucifer follow a lead, and Trixie is a perceptive child.

A knock on the door brought Chloe out of a sleep into a bleary, disoriented panic. She sat up on the couch, barely catching herself against the back before she fell, and tried to get her bearings. It was bright outside the windows; Trixie’s room was still quiet and dark. She’d been up most of the night with her, alternately holding her hair while she threw up and consoling her over the missed camp overnight. She’d finally managed to get a shower and a couple hours of sleep, but she still felt exhausted. 

She stumbled to her feet and went to the door, intent on sending whoever it was packing after telling them off for almost waking up her sick child, but her anger melted away into confusion when she found Ella grinning on her doorstep, a box of donuts in her hands.

“We brought breakfast!” she announced. 

Lucifer reached past her to press a tall cardboard cup into Chloe’s hands. “And coffee. Tall nonfat almond milk latte with sugar-free caramel drizzle,” he rattled off. “How’s the diseased little spawn?”

“Sleeping,” Chloe said. She gestured them inside and closed the door softly. “Keep your voices down. What are you guys doing here?”

Ella put the box of donuts on their dining table and started unloading her bag, laying files out in a neat grid. When she had finished, she gestured proudly to it. “If the detective can’t come to the evidence, the evidence has to come to the detective!”

“It was my idea,” Lucifer said, puffing up his chest.

Chloe blinked. “I was sleeping,” she said.

Lucifer wilted a little. “Do you want us to go?”

She glanced at him. “No,” she said, trying to shake herself more fully awake. “No, I’m just—still waking up.” She took another long sip of the coffee he’d brought her, then held it up. “Thanks. This is helpful. I don’t want to lose a day on the investigation.” Especially with the reunion tomorrow.

Lucifer straightened and smiled. “Lovely.”

Chloe walked slowly around the table, looking at what Ella had set out: crime scene photos, reports from the officers who had talked to the restaurant staff and searched for Sabrina’s car, the report from the medical examiner and Ella’s forensic report. Chloe got her notepad from her bag and added it to the display.

She finished her circuit at the box of donuts and took one. “So,” she said, biting into it, “What’ve we got?”

Ella took a donut and pulled out a chair. She flipped one of the files open. “The ME confirms cause of death was strangulation, not drowning. She puts time of death late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.” She handed Chloe a stack of photos. Lucifer stepped closer, looking over her shoulder at them. “She was hit on the head, too,” Ella went on. “There were particles of paint and rust in the wound, so she hit her head on something metal.”

“A pipe?” Chloe guessed, picking up one of the pictures and turning it to look closer.

“I think a railing,” Ella said. She stood up and pointed to the photo. “The wound suggests an upward angle of force, like she fell against something.”

“Or was pushed,” Chloe murmured.

“Right. And the bruising on her neck doesn’t look like a stranglehold. I think she was pushed, hit her head, and then her assailant pinned her and strangled her with their arm against her throat.” She pulled another piece of paper from the folder and waved it, too fast for Chloe to get a look. “There was definitely tissue from her attacker under her nails, but a day and half in the water washed too much of it away for a DNA sample.”

Chloe looked up from the photo. “But whoever attacked her will have scratches,” she said. She glanced at Lucifer, whose expression mirrored hers.

“Keith Owens had scratches on his arm,” he said.

She snatched up the pile of reports from the officers she’d had following up on other leads and flipped through them until she found the one assigned to Owens. She scanned it and slumped, shaking her head. “His alibi checked out,” she said, handing it over.

“And everyone else we spoke to yesterday was wearing long sleeves.”

She nodded thoughtfully. Not remarkable, in and of itself, even in the middle of the summer in L.A., with the way offices were air conditioned like walk-in freezers. She crossed the room and got the white board that Trixie used to play school, and dragged a barstool over and propped it on it. It was smaller than the ones she used at the precinct, but it would do.

“Okay,” she said, uncapping the marker and starting to write. “We know Sabrina sent a text at 9 saying she was leaving the restaurant.” She added another line above that. “Tristan left the restaurant at 8:30 to pick up his daughter.”

Ella picked up a file and flipped through it. “Officers verified that, too. He signed her out from school at 8:45.”

Chloe drew a line down the center of the board and wrote a list of names in the blocked off space. “Keith Owens’s alibi checks out,” she said, crossing his name off. “And so does Tristan’s.” She drew a line through his name, as well.

“Restaurant staff remembered Sabrina, Chad, and Taylor leaving together,” Ella said, still reading the file. “No one saw if they got in the same cars or different ones, though.”

Chloe added another entry to her timeline with their departure from the restaurant. “And Chad and Taylor say they went to her place right from the restaurant.” She tapped the marker against her lips, frowning at the board. “Was anyone able to verify that?” she asked Ella.

Ella flipped through the file some more and shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Okay.” She added a line with a question mark for their alibi, then added another to the bottom of the white board: _? - time of death_. “So what happened after Sabrina left the restaurant?” She looked at Ella and Lucifer. “What do we know?”

“Both Taylor and Chad had reason to be upset with her,” Lucifer said.

“She was dumped pretty far offshore, but not far enough to keep her from being washed back in,” Ella added.

Chloe nodded, chewing her lip. “That means a boat.” She put the marker on the seat of the barstool and went back to the table. “We need to find out if Chad or Sabrina had access to a boat,” she said, sorting through the stacks until she found the reports on each of them. She cleared a spot for her laptop. “Maybe there’s a marina near the restaurant,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else, her mind buzzing. They hadn’t found Sabrina’s car or phone or computer, but if she could find the boat she’d been dumped from, that might be enough.

***

Ella and the detective settled in to try to locate a boat that Taylor or Chad would have had access to. Lucifer tried to help, but it wasn’t long before he got bored and wandered over to the couch, where the detective had set Trixie up with a film when she’d emerged from her room. He sat on the opposite end of the couch from the child, anxious, for the first time in all of eternity, that he might wind up ill himself. 

The child sat wrapped in blankets at the other end of the couch, despondent. She held a popsicle in one hand, dripping red onto a paper towel wrapped around the stick. “I had to miss my overnight,” she said when he sat down.

“That is indeed a tragedy,” he replied.

She looked back at the television, where a man in a black mask was climbing a rope after giant carrying three people strapped to his body. Delighted, Lucifer leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “ _The Princess Bride!_ I love this film.”

The child only shrugged. Lucifer frowned, disliking the gloomy air that clung to her.

“Surely there will be other overnights?” he ventured after a moment.

“There was going to be a costume contest. I definitely had the best costume.”

“President of Mars?” he asked, recalling her elated chatter of a few days earlier.

“Maze helped me make it.” She glanced over the back of the couch toward where her mother and Ella were bent over one of their computer screens, heads close together. “Mommy said I couldn’t bring the whip to camp, though.”

Lucifer suppressed a laugh. Leave it to Maze; she even made babysitting interesting. “Ah, well, life isn’t fair, child.”

She nodded sagely, her eyes wide. “It’s _not_ fair.”

They watched the movie in silence for a few minutes. Trixie finished the popsicle and wiped her sticky hands on the paper towel, without much effect.

“Lucifer?” she asked.

“Hm?”

“When you were a kid, what did you do when you couldn’t do something?”

“I did what I wanted anyway.”

“Did it make you feel better?”

He glanced down at her. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever asked him that before—not in the earnest way of the child beside him, at least. It gave him a sharp pang in his chest. “Sometimes.” He glanced at her. “Though I suppose my circumstances were rather different. I never had the flu.”

Her eyes went wide. “ _Never?_ Really?”

“Really.”

She thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. “How come?”

“I’m the Devil. I can’t get the flu.” He said it in the same flippant tone he had used with the detective, to tell her a truth he knew wouldn’t be believed, but Trixie regarded him seriously for several moments.

“No, you’re not,” she said at last, turning back to the television. 

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

“Because you’re nice. The Devil’s not nice.”

He huffed, sitting back against the cushions. “I am not _nice_ , child,” he said, but he felt a small warmth bloom inside him.

“You’re nice to me. And Mommy.”

“Yes, well.” He glanced over at Chloe’s bent head, her ponytail falling over one shoulder. “Your mother’s special. Which I suppose makes you special, too,” he added, grimacing as though the words left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I know _that._ ”

He snorted. 

She studied him for a long moment, her brows drawn down.

“Yes?” he asked.

“You’re definitely not the Devil,” she said, nodding decisively. “But I think you’re probably an angel.”

His eyebrows shot up. He shrugged his shoulders self-consciously, wondering if his wings had had unfurled without his noticing, but they remained safely tucked away. He relaxed a tiny bit, still looking warily at her. “The Devil was an angel,” he pointed out.

“Exactly,” she said with finality, and went back to watching her movie. Lucifer stared at her, discomfited by the turn their conversation had taken. Did the child know something? If so, what? And how? Did she have the same abilities as her mother? Something else? (Could she give him the flu, after all?) 

He was still staring hard at her when the detective tapped him on the shoulder. He started, looking up at her guiltily. She gave him a puzzled frown, looking between him and Trixie, but only said, “Chad Barnes owns a boat. We found the marina where he keeps it.” She had changed out of the sweatpants she’d been wearing when he and Ella arrived, and was shrugging on a jacket. She tugged her ponytail out of the collar. “I thought we could go check it out.” She ruffled Trixie’s hair. “Can you stay with Ella for a little bit, Monkey?”

The child brightened at the prospect, though Lucifer could see her eyes were starting to droop. “Yeah!”

Chloe bent and kissed the top of her head. “Try some toast if you get hungry.”

“Okay.” She waved at Lucifer as he skirted around the sofa to join the detective. “Bye, Lucifer.” She looked up at him guilelessly, utterly unaware at what she had stirred up.

He patted her shoulder as he walked past. “Feel better, child.”

***

“What was that about?” Chloe asked when they got in the car.

“What was what about?”

“You were looking at Trixie like you could see through her if you stared hard enough. What did she say to you?”

He pressed his lips together, eyes on the rearview mirror. “Your daughter thinks I’m an angel.”

Chloe sat up straighter, alarmed. “You didn’t say anything to her, did you?”

“Nothing more than I ever said to you before—you know.” He glanced over and saw her disapproving look. “What?”

“She’s a _child_ , Lucifer. It’s a lot easier to convince her of things than you think.”

“Relax, Detective. She hasn’t seen my wings, or my face. I told her I can’t get the flu because I’m the Devil.”

That made Chloe smile despite herself. She relaxed a little and watched him.

“She didn’t believe me. She said I’m”—his mouth twisted—“ _nice_.”

Chloe laughed outright at the look on his face. “You _are_ nice, Lucifer.”

“I am not! I’m charismatic, mysterious, and charming”

“You’re a dork.”

He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “‘Nice’ is boring. I’m not boring.”

“Like an angel?” she guessed.

“Like my brother,” he muttered.

“I don’t think Amenadiel’s boring.”

“Spend a few millennia with him and see what you think.”

She laughed again, but the remark sent a spark of uncertainty through her; the casual way he talked about millennia as a unit of time, not geological but personal, time spent with another person—it reminded her that there was a part of him that would always be inaccessible to her, that she could never comprehend. _Too big a part?_ she wondered.

She watched him for a few moments, driving with one hand on the wheel, the other resting along the window, and thought, _No._ Because she knew him; better, she suspected, than he’d ever let anyone else know him. Better than she knew anyone except Dan and Trixie. Whatever she couldn’t understand about the vastness of his existence, it was dwarfed by the man she knew, in all his goodness and insecurity and bravado and longing to be seen for himself, and not the image that had been crafted for him.

Still, she hesitated for a moment before she said, “Look, about yesterday afternoon . . .”

His features went very still. He didn’t answer for a moment, concentrating as he made the last turn on the way to the marina and pulled into a parking space down the street, every movement careful and precise. “It’s all right, Detective,” he said at last, when he’d come to a stop. “You don’t have to—”

“I know.” She touched his arm and waited for him to look at her. “I don’t think we were about to make a mistake,” she said.

He relaxed under her hand. “Oh,” he said, the relief palpable in his voice.

“I just . . . I don’t want to rush into anything.”

His eyes roamed over her face, as though drinking in the sight of her. “Neither do I, Detective.” 

“But I want . . . I want us . . .” She trailed off, gesturing. God, when had she gotten so awkward? The way he was looking at her made her heart pound—or maybe it was the fact that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. “I want to give us a chance. A real chance,” she managed finally.

“Slowly,” he said.

She nodded. “Is that all right with you?”

The smile that bloomed on his face was warm and sweet and only for her. “Detective. Chloe. That is more than all right.” 

She smiled back, warmth spreading up from her belly. “Good.”

He leaned closer, his gaze dropping to her mouth and then back up to her eyes. “Since you don’t think we were about to make a mistake yesterday,” he began, close enough that she could could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. He hesitated the tiniest bit before he asked, “May I kiss you?”

She licked her lips, her heart pounding harder. “All right.”

It was like the kiss on the beach had been: soft, uncertain, and all-consuming. He tasted like coffee, sugar, and something else that was just _him_ , salt and smoke and earth. He trailed his fingers along her jaw, buried them in her hair. An involuntary noise escaped her throat. She went to pull him closer, but he pulled back, just far enough to look at her. “Too fast?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, and gave a little laugh. “Not at all.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and she resisted the urge to close the space between them again, because if she did, she didn’t think she’d be able to stop at a kiss. Instead, she pulled back farther and gave herself a shake, reminding herself what they were here for. “Come on. Let’s find out if Chad took his boat out Monday night.”

***

The most they could get out of the attendant was that Chad Barnes did, indeed, dock his boat there, but he wouldn’t let Chloe and Lucifer past the gate without a warrant, much less let them review the surveillance footage from Monday night. On his own, Lucifer could have bribed his way past him, but he knew better than to try that with the detective there. Besides, he knew doing such a thing could get the case against Barnes thrown away. He might think all the rules the detective insisted on were foolish, but he knew enough to respect them when it mattered. And when it mattered to her.

He followed her out of the gatehouse. “What now?” he asked, lighting a cigarette. She leaned against the building, looking out over the docks beyond it.

“I’ll apply for a warrant, but that’s gonna take until Monday, at least.” 

He leaned his back against the fence beside her and exhaled, turning away from her to avoid blowing smoke in her face. “What _shall_ we do in the meantime?” he wondered aloud, slanting a playful glance at her.

She rolled her eyes, opening her mouth to reply, but a surprised voice interrupted them.

“Chloe. What are you doing here?”

They looked around to see Chad Barnes standing in the entryway to the gatehouse, laden down with what looked like cleaning supplies. Lucifer flicked ash from his cigarette and pulled away from the fence, fixing the man with a sharp gaze.

Chloe stayed where she was, leaning on the corner of the building. “Just following a lead,” she said. She looked him up and down, her gaze lingering for a moment on his bare arms. “You?”

He laughed uncomfortably. “Planning to take the some people out on the boat tomorrow before the reunion.” He held up up the bucket in his hand. “Just came to make sure it’s clean.”

She gave him a bland smile. “Sounds like fun.” She pushed away from the building and beckoned Lucifer after her. “Have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

His avoided her gaze. “Looking forward to it.” He hurried past them into the gatehouse.

Lucifer watched him go. “Did you see his arms?” he murmured.

She nodded. “No scratches.” She picked up her pace, heading back to the car. “Which means he didn’t kill her. But I bet he’s trying to destroy evidence on his boat.”

“What are you thinking?” Lucifer asked.

“I’m thinking that Taylor is going to be wearing long sleeves tomorrow night,” Chloe said. She got in the car, pulling the door closed after her with considerably more force than strictly necessary.

“What about the boat?” he asked.

“He can scrub it as much as he wants,” Chloe said grimly, looking down the street toward the marina. “It’s extremely difficult to get rid of blood.” She turned back to him with a sigh. “Anyway, looks like you’re getting your wish.”

“Oh?”

She looked up at him through her lashes. “Would you go to the school dance with me, Lucifer?”

“Detective.” He beamed. “It would be my pleasure.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chloe's 20th high school reunion is a profoundly memorable affair for all involved.

When Chloe answered the door on Saturday evening, Lucifer could only stare at her. She was wearing a silvery lace dress with a deep V and fringe at the hem, her hair twisted at the nape of her neck and her lips painted a deep burgundy. She always looked beautiful—she could have been wearing a paper bag and he’d have thought so—but the sight of her now struck him speechless. Maybe because of their kiss yesterday. Maybe simply because seeing her always made him feel as though nothing else in the universe really mattered.

“Detective,” he managed at last, remembering the plastic container he was holding behind his back. He held it out, and she laughed when she saw the corsage inside, a spray of lavender rosebuds and green leaves.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I thought it was traditional.”

“It is if you’re taking me to the prom.”

He shrugged, a smile playing around his lips. “It’s the closest I’ll get,” he said, taking it out of the box. “May I?”

“But of course.” She imitated his accent—badly—and gave an exaggerated little curtsey as she let him slip it on her wrist. “I don’t have anything for you,” she added, dropping the accent and looking around as though a boutonniere might appear.

“What about these?” Trixie tugged on her elbow and they both looked down to see her holding out a fistful of red, trumpet-like flowers. Neither of them had noticed her slip past them into the courtyard. 

“Thank you, Monkey.” Chloe twisted the stems together and tucked them into his buttonhole. “There,” she said, smoothing his lapel.

“Don’t you two look cute,” Maze said, emerging from the kitchen. She leaned against the counter, stumbling a little when Trixie barreled into her, and gave them a smile that was somehow both sardonic and genuine. She draped her arms over Trixie’s shoulders. “Don’t get into too much trouble.”

“How much trouble could there possibly be?” Chloe asked with an airy wave. “We’re just trying to catch a murderer.”

“Yes, what could possibly go wrong?” Lucifer asked. Chloe elbowed him.

Trixie and Maze followed them to the door and waved. “Have fun storming the castle!” Trixie called.

***

For all she had been dreading the reunion, Chloe realized, as she stood on the edge the room observing the crowd, that she was actually enjoying herself. High school hadn’t been a terrible ordeal for her like it had been for some people she knew, but she’d been glad to leave it behind, and hadn’t felt any real interest in reconnecting with old classmates. Still, it was nice to see her old theater crowd—some of whom had gone on to successful careers in the business, others having moved on, and all of them seeming happy—and she couldn’t deny a certain amount of pleasure in the jealous looks she was getting from most of the women, and a lot of the men. Lucifer was being his ordinary, charming, infuriating self, flirting with everything that had a pulse, but it was as clear to everyone else in the room as it was to her that he only had eyes for Chloe.

Lucifer appeared at her elbow and handed her a glass of wine. “I must say, I’m a little disappointed. I thought we were going to be drinking punch out of plastic cups in a school gym,” he said. He cocked his head to the side, listening for a moment, and slanted a grin down at her. “But the music is right on. Did you make the playlist?”

She rolled her eyes and smacked him with her purse. The reunion was being held in a hotel, nothing terribly fancy, but definitely a few steps up from a gym. “You’d be complaining right now if we were in the gym.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’d be making out with you under the bleachers.” 

She barked a surprise laugh. “We’re supposed to be finding a murderer, remember?”

“Right.” His eyes still sparkled with mischief. “Making out after. So what’s our move, Detective?”

She gazed out over the ballroom, frowning a little. “There’s Chad.” She nodded toward where he stood in a knot of men whose broad shoulders and beer guts told the same story of having seen more athletic days. “But I think Taylor’s the key to drawing them both out.” She spotted her across the room and pushed away from the wall, a wicked grin pulling at her lips. “I think I’m gonna go say hi.”

***

“Chloe!” Taylor was wearing a shimmery gold gown that had one full-length sleeve and left her other arm and shoulder bare, much more formal than anything else in the room. Her bare arm was clean, but Chloe was prepared to lay money that the gown’s single sleeve concealed a row of scratches across her forearm. She gave Chloe the same huge, false smile she was giving everyone else, and reached out to embrace her. Chloe turned away just enough to make the hug too awkward for Taylor to follow through with. Instead she patted Chloe’s shoulder with what she no doubt thought of as warmth. “I’m so glad you could make it!” Her gaze flicked up to Lucifer and turned sultry. “And you brought your partner! How lovely.” She licked her lips, her gaze sweeping up and down his tall form. 

“It’s lovely to be here.” Lucifer’s smile flashed. Chloe recognized the icy sharpness of it, but Taylor missed it entirely. She leaned forward and simpered up at him. He leaned away as though afraid she might drool on him.

Chloe laid a possessive hand on Lucifer’s wrist and gave Taylor her best sad smile. “We wanted to be here. For Sabrina’s sake.”

“Ah, yes.” Taylor’s grief looked pasted-on and wary. She sidled closer and lowered her voice, her eyes darting around the room. “May I ask how the investigation is going?”

“I can’t go into detail right now.” She paused, then added, as if an afterthought, “But I think we should be able to make an arrest soon.”

“What a relief.” Taylor’s smile didn’t falter, but her posture was rigid under that golden gown.

“Indeed,” Lucifer agreed, eyeing her with his lips pressed together. 

Taylor didn’t seem to realize that his distaste was directed at her, though; she looked up at him through her lashes and shuddered. “To think someone would do that to Sabrina. I can’t imagine.”

“I’m sure you can’t,” he murmured, taking half a step forward, his eyes flashing. Chloe tightened her grip on his arm, caught his eye, and gave a little shake of her head. She didn’t want either his regular eye mojo or the rather more terrifying one right now. He relaxed, reluctantly, and a moment later he was giving Taylor his most charming smile. “It’s a lovely party, Miss Morton. We’ll leave you to greet the rest of your guests.” He looked down at Chloe. “Shall we dance, my dear?”

Chloe suppressed a snort as she took it, letting him lead her away with Taylor staring after them, somehow managing to look jealous, lustful, and terrified all at once. “‘Shall we dance?’” she mimicked. “That was a bit much, don’t you think?”

“I was serious, darling.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “They’re playing our song.”

She listened for a moment and groaned. 

“What?” He grinned at her, his eyes sparkling. “I thought you love this song.” He paused, sly. “I know you liked it when _I_ sang it to you.”

“I _hated_ it when you sang it to me,” she said, but she let him take her glass and set it on a nearby table, and draw her out onto the dance floor.

“Do you feel the same?” He put an arm around her waist and drew her close, singing into her ear. “Or am I only dreaming?” He turned them in a slow circle, in time to the lyrics. “Am I burning an eternal flame?”

Chloe couldn’t help but laugh. “Stop, Lucifer. Not now.”

“Why?”

“Because we have a job to do.”

“Right.” He spun her around. “So. Now you’ve needled Taylor. What next?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. She wasn’t even sure what her aim had been with winding Taylor up like that, except that it had seemed like the right move at the time (and, if she was honest, it had also been fun to watch her squirm). “Wait and watch, I guess. See if she makes a mistake.”

“Oh, well, that’s boring.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yes, actually.” He guided her to the other side of the dance floor and nodded to the display of yearbook spreads and current photos of alumni along the back wall of the room, above a row of paper-covered ballot boxes arranged on long tables. “Along with voting for who still has the most hair and who has the least obvious facelift”—Chloe snorted—“your classmates are choosing a king and queen of the reunion.” His gaze cut across the room and his teeth flashed. “I’m sure I know who expects to win.”

Chloe glanced over her shoulder at Taylor, who was chatting up a group of women whose existence she had barely acknowledged when they were in high school. _She’s probably already stuffed the ballot box,_ she thought. Aloud she said, “What do you have in mind?”

Lucifer reached into his inside pocket and drew out a stack of cash. “Just making sure the votes don’t go in her favor.”

“With bribery?” Chloe eyed the cash.

He shrugged. “It’s a classic for a reason, Detective.”

She closed her eyes. It was as good a plan as any, she thought. And losing a popularity contest was the likeliest way she could think of to drive Taylor to do something stupid. “Fine. Just—be discreet.” He beamed. “I’m going to go see what kind of gossip I can pick up.”

***

After wandering through the ballroom for an hour, Chloe had overheard people talking about enough affairs and secret children and third homes in Napa to last a lifetime, but nothing relevant to the case. She found an empty table at the edge of the dance floor and leaned on it, alternately watching the room and fiddling with her phone. She checked in with Maze (she’d let Trixie stay up late watching movies, of course, but at least she was honest about it) and checked in with dispatch to make sure that the backup she had requested was still on standby. She doubted she would need it, but better to be safe than sorry.

Lucifer joined her a little while later, sliding a fresh glass of wine across the black tablecloth to her. “They’re counting up the ballots now,” he said. He looked so satisfied that Chloe was surprised there weren’t feathers clinging to the corner of his mouth. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“What did you do?”

He sipped his wine. “Just wait.” He grinned. “You’ll love it.”

“Should I call for backup?”

He paused, the glass halfway to his lips, and hesitated for just a moment too long. “I don’t think that should be necessary.”

Chloe’s fingers wrapped around her phone, just in case.

The music finally stopped and Tristan stepped onto the stage, followed by Taylor, who held a stack of envelopes. They picked up two cordless microphones from the DJ table.

“Can everyone hear me?” Taylor asked into her mic. At the responding cheers, she smiled broadly. “I’m so glad you all could come out to the 20-year reunion of the class of ’97!” Another round of cheers. Chloe rolled her eyes. Lucifer cast her an amused glance.

“Is this what a pep rally is like?” he asked in a stage whisper.

“Thank goodness, no,” she replied. “Those are worse. There are cheerleaders at pep rallies.”

Lucifer, of course, looked disappointed. “I like cheerleaders.”

Taylor handed her pile of envelopes to Tristan and went on, “You’ve all been voting all night for our reunion awards, our volunteers have counted up the ballots and we’re here to announce them to you!” She gave an exaggerated wink. “And, just so you know, neither of us have seen these results, so without further ado, Tristan?”

He took the envelope from the top of the stack. “Our first award is for ‘Best Dancer,’” he said, opening it. He paused to read, and then announced, “Pete Deering!” A roar erupted from the opposite corner of the room, and a dark-haired man capered across the dance floor and up to the stage, his tie around his forehead and his shirt half-open.

Beside her, Lucifer made a disgusted noise as Pete writhed about on the stage before he accepted his award and went back to his friends. Lucifer eyed the pile of envelopes and sighed heavily. “This is going to take forever, isn’t it?” he asked.

Chloe laughed. “You see now why I didn’t want to come?”

He drained his glass and reached for hers. “Another drink?”

“I’m fine.” She kept her fingers lightly around the stem of the half-full glass, and he wandered back to the bar for his refill.

It took half an hour for them to get through the whole list of awards—from “most unusual job” (that went to a woman who did marine conservation up in Monterey) to “best hair” (Taylor, to her delight). Finally, there were only two envelopes remaining, and Taylor took over the mic with an excited giggle, while Chloe wondered how a grown woman could be so invested in something so trivial.

“All right, here we go!” she said, and held up the envelopes. “Which one should I open first? King or queen?” There was some generalized shouting that she pretended to listen to, and then she waved her hands for quiet. “Let’s start with king. Save the best for last,” she said with a knowing smile. She slipped her finger under the flap and pulled out the card. “And the King of the Reunion is . . .” She blinked at the card, frowning. “Lucifer Morningstar?”

Chloe closed her eyes. “ _Lucifer._ ” She opened them to see him grinning like a madman as he edged around the table. “You didn’t even _go_ to my high school,” she pointed out through gritted teeth. “Or any high school!”

“So? It’s king of the _reunion_ , not king of the school.”

She spluttered incoherently. He just winked at her. “See you in a second,” he said, and sauntered across the dance floor to accept his crown.

Chloe watched him go, her heart sinking as she grasped his meaning. _Oh, no,_ she thought. _No, no, no, no._ Lucifer caught her eye across the room and his grin got even wider, if that was possible. She closed her eyes.

“And now for queen of the reunion!” Taylor’s voice was full of expectation. There was a rustle of paper as she opened the envelope, and then a long pause. Finally she cleared her throat and read Chloe’s name in a voice that sounded like she might throw up.

Every head in the room turned to her. There was some hesitant clapping. Chloe felt like her face was on fire. 

“Oh, come on!” Lucifer’s voice came over the sound system. She opened her eyes to see him holding Taylor’s microphone and looking out at the crowd in consternation. “Is that any way to welcome your queen? Look at her! Isn’t she beautiful?” He swept a hand in her direction. “ _And_ she’s the best detective in L.A.! There’s no one more deserving of your admiration.”

Chloe groaned, but his compliment warmed her a little, and she put on a smile and crossed the dance floor to join him on the stage. As she did so, she surreptitiously reached in her purse and hit send on the text message she had written to Dan. Taylor was looking at her with murder in her eyes. “I can’t believe you,” she hissed when she was beside him.

“What?” He put the plastic crown on her head. She looked up to find him looking at her soberly. The warmth in his eyes melted away her irritation, and for a moment she forgot where they were. “You deserve it more than anyone else here, Detective.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could an ear-splitting screech split the air. A body slammed into her, knocking her down, and hands tangled in her hair, seizing the crown. Gold flashed in her vision. “It was supposed to be _me!_ ” Taylor shrieked.

Chloe grabbed the woman’s hand and twisted, pushing her to her knees as Chloe got back on her feet. She struggled, and Chloe twisted harder, making Taylor’s eyes bug out. She looked down at her, catching her breath. “Seriously?” she asked. “Over a plastic crown?” It had caught in Chloe’s hair and hung askew on her head.

Taylor’s eyes welled up with tears and spilled over. “It was supposed to be me,” she repeated, her lip trembling. “I got rid of Sabrina, and there was no one to compete with me. It was mine!”

“Aha!” Lucifer cried. “So you did kill her!”

Taylor bared her teeth. “She deserved it! She stole everything from me!”

“No, she was just a better person than you, and everyone knew,” Chloe said. “Taylor Morton, you’re under arrest for the murder of Sabrina Diaz. Lucifer, would you please get my handcuffs? They’re in my purse.”

“Gladly.” He reached for the small bag at her hip, but before he could the tell-tale click of a safety clicking broke the stunned silence around them. He froze and turned toward the sound.

“You _bitch_.” 

Chad Barnes stood in the middle of the dance floor, holding a gun in shaking hands. Chloe couldn’t tell tell if he was aiming at her or at Taylor. She raised her free hand, palm toward him. She was aware of Taylor kneeling at her feet, Lucifer standing beside her, the hushed crowd watching, but her only focus was on the gun, and the man holding it. “Chad,” she began. 

He shook his head. “Don’t.”

Very carefully, she let go of Taylor’s wrist and raised her other hand. “Put the gun down, Chad. You don’t want to do this.”

“Yes, I do.” His voice shook, and she could see tears pooling in his eyes. He shook the gun at Taylor. “You ruined everything!”

Taylor hunched over, cradling her wrist, but she sneered at him. “You really think she’d’ve wanted to be with you?”

“She was supposed to be mine! You promised me I could have her!”

“I told you what you wanted to hear!”

“ _Shut up!_ ”

The gun went off. For the second time that night, someone threw Chloe to the floor; Lucifer, this time. He was on his feet again in an instant, throwing himself at Chad and twisting the gun from his grip before he’d recovered from the surprise of actually firing it. Chloe got to her feet more slowly, shaking her head to clear it. Taylor lay dazed beside her. Deciding she wasn’t going anywhere, she turned her attention to her accomplice.

“She was supposed to be mine!” Chad whined, struggling to stay on his feet with his arm twisted around behind him.

Lucifer gave the arm a jerk and Chad fell to his knees. “She doesn’t _belong_ to you, you cretin. What makes you think you had any right to her?”

“We were supposed to be together!” He was sobbing now, his face red. “Everything went wrong when we split up. My whole life went to shit. It was never the same.” He sagged in Lucifer’s grip. “She _owed_ me.”

Lucifer’s mouth twisted. “She didn’t owe you anything.” He handed the gun to Chloe. She took it, cuffed Chad’s hands behind his back and left him sitting on the floor. There was a burst of activity at the back of the room, and she heard Dan’s voice in the commotion, caught a glimpse of uniforms in the crowd. A little rush of relief ran through her that they had gotten there so quickly. She turned back to Lucifer.

“You okay?” she asked, looking him over.

“‘Course I am, why?”

There was a ragged hole in his sleeve. Chloe reached up and plucked at it, found the black fabric wet. She looked at her fingers and her breath caught. “No you’re not.” She pulled his jacket from his shoulders, revealing a bright red stain spreading rapidly on his white shirt.

“Oh,” he said, looking down at it with surprise. “I’m bleeding.”

“Shit.” Chloe reached out blindly and found a chair, grabbed it and dragged it toward him. “Sit,” she ordered, guiding him to it with her other hand.

“All right,” he agreed, blinking rapidly as though he couldn’t quite see. He took a step, swaying, and then his face went white, his knees buckled, and he fell against her.

***

“Bloody hell, that hurts,” Lucifer groaned. He was lying on the floor of the hotel ballroom. Someone had turned on the overhead lights, and people were milling all about. Detective Douche knelt bside him pressing a cloth napkin tight against the wound with one hand. The fingers of his other hand were pressed against his arm above the wound, nearly in his armpit. 

He frowned up at the detective. “What are you doing?” He lifted his head and looked around, trying to pull away and sit up. Dan stilled him with a glare.

“Controlling your bleeding. Don’t try to get up.”

His head was clearing slowly, and with it came the memory of the bullet searing into his flesh just as he knocked the detective aside. “This is terribly undignified,” he complained. “What happened?”

Dan’s expression smoothed into a smirk. “You fainted, dude. _Very_ undignified.” 

Lucifer scowled. He was never going to hear the end of that. Dan’s smirk widened to a grin, but he sobered quickly. He glanced across the room and then back down at Lucifer. “Chloe said you stepped in front of that bullet for her.” He hesitated. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” he muttered, avoiding the detective’s gaze. Of course he’d put himself between Chloe and a bullet. They were rather less lethal to him than they were to her. Most of the time, at least.

He felt footsteps vibrating on the floor under him and a moment later Chloe stepped into view above him. She knelt beside him and took over holding his arm from Dan. “Ambulance is gonna be here in a sec,” she said.

Lucifer let out an exasperated huff. “Detective, I really don’t need an ambulance. I’m quite all right.” Or he would be, anyway. He tried to push himself upright again, but her stern look and her grip on his arm made him stop.

“You’re not all right, you got shot.” She glanced up at Dan. “Will you go meet the paramedics and show them where we are?”

Lucifer waited until Dan was out of earshot before he said, “I’ll recover rather quickly if you go back to the station with your colleagues and leave me here.”

Chloe raised her eyebrows. “In front of many, many witnesses who will see you suddenly recover from a gunshot wound,” she pointed out. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because people can’t see that you’re—!” She broke off with an exasperated shake of her head and gestured aggressively at him with her chin.

“Now you sound like Amenadiel,” he muttered.

“Well, he’s right. What do you think will happen if all these people see you heal?”

“Nothing, Detective.” Lucifer said. “They’ll find a way to dismiss the evidence of their senses.” He looked meaningfully up at her. “You always did.” 

“What about Dan? You want to explain it to him?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. He was going to have to, eventually, if they were to keep working together, but Lucifer would prefer it not be in such a public venue.

“Besides,” Chloe added, a hint of levity in her tone, “If you abandon me to deal with all this on my own, I’ll shoot you again myself.” She glanced up as the paramedics arrived and moved aside for them. 

He sighed, submitting with bad grace to the indignity of having his sleeve cut away. “Very well,” he grumbled.

She grinned and patted his cheek. “If you’re very good, I’ll take you for a milkshake after.”

The paramedic who had taken Chloe’s place beside him barked a laugh, and Lucifer turned his glare on her. Unmoved, she manipulated his arm, examining the wound. “Ow,” he complained. He looked back up at Chloe as she got to her feet. “I’m holding you to that,” he said.

“I’ll expect a full report,” Chloe said to the paramedic, who laughed again.

“You got it, Detective.”

Lucifer scowled at Chloe’s retreating back as she went to deal with their two murderers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! I'm aiming to get it up later this week, or next weekend at the latest. Thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting along! Your comments and responses always brighten my day.
> 
> If you're wondering, these are the flowers that Trixie picks for Lucifer:  
> http://www.bhg.com/gardening/gardening-by-region/southern-california/top-native-plants-of-southern-california/?slideId=d449e6c0-3783-40e2-b238-c7a0e3652257


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the case is wrapped up, Chloe and Lucifer both make good on deals, and fluff is enjoyed by all (well, except the murderers, but they don't deserve fluff).

Chloe left Lucifer arguing loudly with the paramedic about whether he needed to be taken to the hospital, and complaining dramatically in the next breath about how much something she was doing to his arm hurt. Chloe smiled to herself. _Not high marks for good behavior,_ she thought, though she could hardly blame him for the sentiment, if not the drama. He _didn’t_ need to go to the hospital, for reasons the paramedic wouldn’t believe even if he told her, and his arm certainly _did_ hurt, even though the injury wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. That it was a clean through-and-through shot to the outside of his arm, missing bone and arteries, was sheer luck. Even with Lucifer’s quick response, that wild shot could have left one or both of them in much worse shape. She tried not to think about that, instead turning her focus to the two people whose vanity had done so much damage.

The excitement of Taylor and Chad’s confrontation and the backup team’s arrival had died down to an orderly murmur. Several uniformed officers were sitting at tables taking statements while partygoers milled about, picking at the hors d’oeuvres talking in hushed whispers. Chloe made her way to where Chad and Taylor were handcuffed and seated in chairs against the wall near the ballroom entrance, watched over by Dan and an officer.

Taylor glared at Chloe as she approached. Her makeup was smudged, her hair disheveled, and her dress had torn in their scuffle, but she still looked down her nose at everyone around her.. “I want my lawyer,” she said, before Chloe could even open her mouth.

Chloe shrugged. Taylor had already said plenty, not to mention assaulted a police officer, in front of a few hundred witnesses. There was only so much even the best lawyer could do for her now. She’d make sure of that.

She turned to Chad, who slumped miserably in his chair, his shirt and jacket pulling across his chest with the awkward position of his arms, and smiled coldly. “Why don’t we go somewhere quiet to talk?” she said.

He glanced fearfully up at her, then at Taylor, as Dan hauled him to his feet. He stumbled along between them to a conference room across the hall from the ballroom.

“I didn’t kill her!” he blurted as soon as Chloe closed the door behind them. She raised an eyebrow. Dan dropped him into a chair and he scrabbled his feet to keep his balance, his eyes wide and frantic. “You have to believe me. It was Taylor.”

“I believe you,” Chloe said mildly. She pulled a chair around to face him and sat down. “But you still helped dispose of her body. Yesterday I caught you trying to destroy evidence. Which won’t work, by the way. Blood doesn’t wash away easily.” She paused. “And tonight you shot my partner, and tried to shoot me.”

Chad paled. Dan let out a low whistle.“That doesn’t sound good for you,” he said. He took a seat beside Chloe, facing backwards in the chair with his arms resting on the back. “Taylor’s probably going to hire a really expensive lawyer,” he continued. “A lawyer I’m guessing is well outside the means of a middle management salesman.” 

“It’s in your best interest to tell us everything, Chad,” Chloe said, leaning forward. “Help us put Taylor away and maybe we can convince the judge to be lenient with you.” Not that he deserved it.

He gave a jerky, eager nod, his lips trembling. “I’ll help. It was all Taylor, she made me—she threatened to tell my wife— Please, I can’t go to prison.” 

Chloe suppressed the urge to roll her eyes, and instead took out the notepad and pen she’d borrowed from one the officers and looked expectantly at him. He gulped and started talking, slowly at first, and then faster as he explained how he, Sabrina, and Taylor had left the restaurant together, taking their argument into the parking lot; how Sabrina had stood up to Taylor in a rare show of assertiveness; and how Taylor had flown into a rage and attacked her, pushing her against the metal railing along the handicap ramp to the restaurant’s back entrance and knocking her unconscious. They’d loaded her into Chad’s SUV then, at Taylor’s insistence, and gone to the marina where he and Taylor had been planning to have their tryst. Sabrina regained consciousness and tried to flee the car, frightened and disoriented. Taylor had restrained her in the backseat, her forearm against her windpipe, until Sabrina stopped trying to fight her. When they realized she was dead, Taylor had taken charge, threatening to reveal everything to Chad’s wife if he didn’t take the boat out and help her dump Sabrina’s body.

He was finishing his story when the door behind them opened and Lucifer poked his head in. “Detective?” His face lit when he saw Chloe. “There you are, I’ve been look—Oh. You.” He noticed Chad and scowled, coming the rest of the way into the room. His jacket was gone, and his shirt sleeve ended in a ragged hole at the shoulder. His arm rested in a sling, swathed in bandages. “You shot me. _And_ you ruined my suit.” He spared an annoyed glance for Chloe. “Another one. Working with you is hell on my wardrobe, Detective.”

Chloe saw Dan shake his head, and she exchanged an amused glance with him before looking up at her partner. “You’ll get another one.” She nodded toward her former classmate. “Chad was just telling us how he helped Taylor kill Sabrina,” she said, her tone conversational.

“I didn’t help kill her,” Chad protested, shrinking even further into his chair under their sharp gazes. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. We were just supposed to talk. I was going to make her see . . .” He trailed off.

“Make her see what?” Lucifer asked.

Chad sniffled. “That I loved her.”

At that, Lucifer went utterly still. He took a step toward him. “What did you say?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft.

Chad looked up at him and swallowed hard, a mouse caught in the shadow of a hawk. “I said . . . I loved her. I wanted her.”

Lucifer’s eyes flashed red. He closed the space between them in two long strides, seized the front of Chad’s shirt with his free hand and lifted him out of his chair. Chad squeaked and scrabbled at Lucifer’s hand. He dangled in Lucifer’s grip, only his toes brushing the floor. 

Beside Chloe, Dan jerked in surprise. She reached over and laid a hand on his arm, hoping to keep him from bolting, or trying to attack Lucifer, or anything else. He glanced at her with wide eyes, but stayed where he was, his hands clenched in fists, white-knuckled.

“ _Wanting_ isn’t love,” Lucifer grated out. “That’s jealousy and greed. Love isn’t about _possessing_. Love is—” He broke off, his voice suddenly choked. His gaze flickered toward Chloe. She met his gaze, her own voice choking off as well as they stared at each other. Several seconds ticked by in tense silence.

“Love is doing whatever it takes to make sure that person is happy,” Dan said at last, his voice low. He very carefully didn’t look at Chloe. “Even if it’s not with you.”

Lucifer glanced at him, blinking. He slowly lowered Chad, his grip loosening on his shirt. Beads of sweat had broken out across Dan’s forehead, but he met Lucifer’s gaze calmly, his head held high.

“Yes,” Lucifer agreed. He lowered Chad the rest of the way into his chair and stepped back. “Well said, detective.” Dan gave him a short nod.

The knot in Chloe’s chest loosened a little with their exchange. Lucifer was going to have to explain things to Dan, but whatever had just passed between them, Dan seemed satisfied that Lucifer wasn’t an enemy to either of them. Whatever else happened would have to be between the two of them. Later. Without her. 

She turned back to Chad, whose eyes darted back and forth among the three of them. Sweat poured over his face, and he flinched every time he looked at Lucifer. “So.” Chloe got to her feet and reached for his arm. “Ready to give your statement?”

***

It was nearly midnight by the time they left the hotel, leaving behind the forensic team still processing the scene. Chloe claimed the keys to the Corvette on the way out, ignoring Lucifer’s protests that he was perfectly capable of driving.

“You’re drunk,” Chloe pointed out, nodding to the flask he’d been steadily self-medicating from. “And you can’t drive a stick with only one hand.” He opened his mouth to protest that point, but she pressed on. “Besides, I want a chance to drive this thing.”

He scowled, watching her open the driver’s side door. “Very well. Just be careful with her.”

Chloe raised her eyebrows. “Her?”

He ignored her and got in the car. Chloe followed. He kept scowling while she adjusted the mirrors and moved the seat forward (God, he was tall). She glanced sidelong at him. “Keep making that face and I’m not buying you a milkshake,” she said.

The scowl smoothed away, replaced with wide, offended eyes. “Detective! We had a deal!”

Chloe laughed. “That’s your thing, not mine.”

He grumbled, but he also stopped scowling, and then spent the whole drive to the all-night diner Chloe had found encouraging her to stop observing the speed limit. 

“What’s the point of driving it if you’re not going to break the rules?” he asked as they went inside.

They were both starving after the events of the evening, and ordered burgers and fries along with their milkshakes—chocolate malt with extra malt for Chloe, plain chocolate for Lucifer. He settled back on his side of the booth after practically inhaling half his burger. “So,” he said. “Was this evening indicative of your high school experience?”

Chloe snorted. “Hardly.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What? Drama, backstabbing, sex—isn’t that what high school is all about?”

“I guess.” She sipped her shake. “But no one wound up dead when we were kids.” 

“Ah.”

“High school was a pretty uneventful time for me, Lucifer. It is for a lot of people.” She wondered what that time of life had been like for him. Was that when he had rebelled against his father, or had he been older? Or wasn’t there really an angelic equivalent to human adolescence?

She was about to ask him when he said, “It wasn’t for me.” He glanced at her. “I mean, not high school, obviously, but when I was . . . a teenager, of a sort.” His gaze turned inward. “My siblings and I were always fighting,” he went on after a moment. “And my parents—Dad had become obsessed with humanity, and Mum was so angry with him.” He shook his head. “She forgot all of us.”

“You were angry, too,” Chloe said. 

“Yes.” 

She hesitated, but the combination of the late hour and the aftermath of adrenaline made her feel bold enough to ask, “Is that why you rebelled?” The diner was empty except for them, and anyone listening wouldn’t have understood, but she still kept her voice low.

“Part of it. The stories are true, I wanted free will.” He shook his head. “All my siblings seemed content to play the parts that were written for them.”

“But you wanted more.”

“Yes.” He smiled, hard and bitter, without humor. “And the hell of it is, I don’t know if I got it. I don’t know if I played right into his hands and played the role he wanted me to all along, or . . .”

“Hey.” Chloe touched his hand. He blinked a few times before he focused on her, coming back from wherever he had gone. “It doesn’t matter, remember? Whatever your dad wants or expects, your choices are still yours.”

“Perhaps,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

Not knowing what else to do to offer comfort, she settled for looking away, concentrating on her food, and giving him a few moments to gather himself.

“One thing that _was_ different about tonight,” she said, after she thought enough time had gone by, “I never got to be prom queen in high school.” A smile tugged at her mouth. She’d been furious at Lucifer, but she had to admit the stunned looks from Taylor and her coterie had been worth seeing—and it had been a sweet gesture. _Nice_ she thought with amusement, knowing how he would object to the characterization. “It was fun, even if it wasn’t real.”

He frowned down at her. “What makes you say it wasn’t real?”

“You paid them to vote for me.”

“No, I paid them to vote for _me_. I just _asked_ them to vote for you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “If you gave them money, I think you paid them to vote for both of us.”

He sighed. “ _Now_ who can’t let go of things that don’t matter?” She rolled her eyes, but he leaned forward, earnest. “You’re better than all of them, Detective. Whether they see it or not.”

“Thanks.” She looked away, flushing, and tried to cover her embarrassment with a laugh. She couldn’t help warming to his compliment, silly as all of it was. “But I’d rather be recognized for catching Sabrina’s killers than a stupid popularity contest.”

“Well.” He sat back. “I suspect that’s what everyone’s going to remember about tonight.”

“You’re probably right about that,” she admitted. It had hardly been the excruciatingly boring affair she had been expecting. Excruciating, yes, but certainly not boring.

He grinned. “I like when you say that.”

“Say what?”

“That I’m right.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t get used to it,” she said. “It doesn’t happen very often.”

***

Chloe woke the next morning to the smells of yeast and cinnamon and the sound of a familiar chortle drifting up to her room. She inhaled deeply. _Maze?_ she thought, still bleary with sleep, but no, cinnamon _toast_ was more than her roommate could handle, let alone cinnamon _rolls_. Then she registered the owner of the chortle and frowned, pushing herself up. Hadn’t she taken him home last night? She looked at the clock. What was he doing here so early? 

She pulled a pair of pajama pants on under the t-shirt she’d worn to bed and went downstairs to find Lucifer and Trixie sitting together on the couch, their dark heads bent over something that was making both of them giggle. The plastic crown from the reunion sat on Trixie’s head, improbably rescued from the mayhem last night by Lucifer. Chloe stood at the bottom of the steps and watched them, not sure whether she was more annoyed or charmed by the sight.

“And this is Mommy being an elf,” Trixie said, turning a page in the book they were looking at. Lucifer made a gleeful sound.

“She missed casting for _The Lord of the Rings_ , he remarked. “She would have made an excellent Frodo Baggins.”

“Frodo Baggins isn’t an elf,” Chloe said, coming up behind them. “He’s a hobbit. What are you looking at?” She leaned on the back of the couch.

“Detective!” Lucifer leaned back to look up at her, beaming. “You’re awake! Your hobbit was just showing me your high school yearbooks.”

“I’m not a hobbit!” Trixie protested.

Lucifer frowned at her. “Aren’t hobbits small humans?”

Chloe laughed. “Sort of,” she agreed. She ruffled Trixie’s hair. “But she doesn’t have the pointy ears.”

“Or hairy feet,” Trixie said, sticking out her tongue. “Like _you_.” She prodded Lucifer’s leg with her foot, and he glared down at her.

“My feet are _not_ hairy.”

Trixie giggled. Chloe leaned further down to see what humiliating pictures they’d been looking at and found herself grinning at the full page black-and-white photo of her sixteen-year-old self standing on the stage in the school theater. She _did_ look a little like a hobbit in the photo, wearing a curly wig and a pointy hat. “I’m not an elf in that, I’m a fairy,” she said, reaching between them to point at the caption. “That’s me playing Puck in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream._ ” 

Lucifer held up the book to read it. “So it is,” he said, looking back at the photo again, this time with interest. 

Chloe rested her chin in on her fist. “How’s your arm?”

“Good as new,” he said, flexing and extending it to demonstrate.

Trixie looked back and forth between them. “What happened to Lucifer’s arm?”

“Just a little bullet,” Lucifer said, putting the yearbook aside. “All better, now.”

“Oh.” Trixie looked up at Chloe, disapproval on her small features. “Mommy, did you shoot Lucifer again?”

Lucifer let out a loud snort.

Chloe glared at him. “What did you say to her?”

He held up his hands, protesting innocence. “I didn’t say anything, Detective.”

“You shot him that other time,” Trixie said.

Chloe pressed her lips together and clenched her fists, willing herself the patience to deal with these two. When she had herself under control again, she said, “That was just the one time. A bad man shot him last night.”

Trixie looked to Lucifer for confirmation. “She’s right. Your mother did not shoot me this time. Nor is she planning to again, I don’t think.” He raised an eyebrow at her.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Of course not. The first time was—”

“An accident,” Lucifer finished. At her questioning look, he shrugged. “The bleeding was accidental, anyway.”

Trixie seemed to think about that for a moment, then nodded to herself and, unfazed, hopped off the couch and slid over the floor in her socks to the kitchen. “Are the cinnamon rolls done yet?” she asked.

“Very likely,” Lucifer said. He snapped the yearbook shut and followed her, climbing over the back of the sofa and overtaking her with his long legs.

“What are you doing here so early, anyway?” Chloe asked, following them.

“A deal’s a deal, Detective!” Lucifer put on a pair of oven mitts and reached into the oven to take out a bubbling pan of cinnamon rolls. He set them on the stove to cool and grinned over his shoulder at her.

“What deal?”

“I owe you breakfast, remember?”

She frowned. “You brought me donuts the other day.”

“That doesn’t count.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “And besides, those were from Miss Lopez.” He opened the fridge and took out a carton of eggs. “Omelette?”

“Sure. Thanks.” She went to pour herself a cup of coffee, but he steered her to a barstool and insisted she sit before he would move away.

“I’ve got everything, Detective.” He poured a cup from the carafe and passing it across the counter. “You don’t lift a finger.”

Beside her, Trixie pouted. “What about me?”

“What about you?” A line of confusion appeared between his brows. “Do children drink coffee?”

“Ew.” Trixie made a face.

“How about a glass of milk or orange juice?” Chloe suggested. 

“Both,” Trixie said. “And eggs, and bacon, and a cinnamon roll.” Chloe raised an eyebrow at her daughter. “Please,” she added, after a beat.

Chloe grinned at her partner. “You heard the woman,” she said. “Eggs, bacon, and a cinnamon roll. Make that two.”

Trixie leaned close and whispered, “I helped make the cinnamon rolls,”

Chloe put her forehead to her daughter’s and whispered back, “I’m sure they’re delicious.” 

***

The cinnamon rolls _were_ delicious. Trixie wandered off to her room to play after she’d finished eating, and Chloe and Lucifer relocated to the sofa with fresh cups of coffee. Chloe fell back against the cushions with a groan, glad for the elastic waistband on her pants. She’d eaten entirely too much.

“Where did you learn to bake like that?” she asked.

He gave her a slow smile and sipped his coffee. “I have many skills, Detective.”

She snorted. “I’m sure you do. Some of them are even useful.”

“Hey!” He sat up, giving her an affronted look. “They’re _all_ useful, given the right situation. As you’ve learned.”

“If you say so,” she replied, with a grin to let him know she was teasing. She settled comfortably against him and clasped her mug between her hands, savoring the warmth of the ceramic and the solidity of Lucifer’s body against hers. It was nice, she thought, to spend a morning with him and Trixie. It almost felt—normal. Calm. Safe. _Boring_ , Lucifer would say. She sipped her coffee and snuggled closer to him, thought about what it would be like to spend a morning with him after having also spent the night together, and concluded that she might want to do that soon.

Not yet, but soon.

“Were you ever serious about it?” Lucifer asked. 

She gave her head a shake, trying to find her way back to their earlier conversation, but she couldn’t follow whatever thread had led him to that question. “About what?”

“Acting.”

“I was in a movie, remember?”

He rolled his eyes. “Not _that_ kind of acting.”

“What, like, Shakespeare?”

“If you like.” He shrugged. “As I’ve said before, I have the utmost respect for _Hot Tub High School_ , but I know it isn’t art, Detective.” He looked down at her, speculative. He hesitated before he went on, “And in that picture, you look . . . happy.”

She smiled, reaching for the yearbook and flipping through it until she came to the page again. “I was,” she agreed. She ran her hand across the glossy paper. “I don’t know. I don’t think I thought about it that much when I was a teenager. Acting was fun. I liked getting to escape into a different world, telling stories. I didn’t really make a separation between what was and wasn’t art. It didn’t all have to be meaningful.” She traced the outline of the trees on the set in the background of the photo, not looking at him. “But after my dad died, I didn’t see any meaning in acting. It just felt . . . empty.” She shrugged. “Maybe if I had done something other than _Hot Tub High School_ I’d have felt differently. But I’m glad I made the choice that I did.”

A smile curved his lips. Impulsively, she stretched up and kissed him. He froze for a moment, then melted into her, his hand coming up to cup her cheek with one hand. It was more gentle than passionate, a coffee and cinnamon glazed kiss that transported her back to the other afternoon in the car. Chloe pulled away.

“I’m glad I met you,” she said. He wasn’t the only reason; there was Trixie, and Dan, and the satisfaction that she took in her work, the feeling of doing something important, and doing it well. But right here, right now, it was knowing that walking down this road had taken her to Lucifer and all the strange and frightening and wonderful things that she had seen since they had started working together.

His lips brushed against hers as he replied. “So am I.”

***

_So, here we go back again_   
_Slow climb, but quick to descend_   
_Arms out, arms out_   
_Turn into the spin_   
_It’s lovely and brief_   
_With just gravity and me._

_And if we choose to fall_   
_Who’s to say it isn’t flight?_   
_So here we go back again_   
_It’s lovely and brief_   
_With just gravity and me._

—Dessa, “Into the Spin”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's done! Many, many thanks for all the comments and kudos along the way, to Antarctic_Echoes for the beta on chapter 1, when I really needed someone else's eyeballs on this, and most of all to to BaileyBelle for the prompt that started it all. I had a lot of fun writing it, and it means so much to me that you enjoyed it! <3


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